The Reforging of the Key
by Zab Jade
Summary: Set during the time between seasons five and six. Without Buffy there to anchor her in reality, Dawn begins to fade away. After the Key is remade with Spike as a secondary anchor, Buffy's spirit - granted a favor in exchange for her eventual return to life - creates a shared dream for Spike, Dawn, and Tara.
1. Chapter 1: Deconstruction

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter One: Deconstruction**

 **Disclaimer:** :All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

 **Summary:** Set during the time between seasons five and six. Without Buffy there to anchor her in reality, Dawn begins to fade away. After the Key is remade with Spike as a secondary anchor, Buffy's spirit creates a shared dream for Spike, Dawn, and Tara. In the dream world, there is no chip, leaving Spike to either fight against his nature or raise an age-regressed Dawn to see her own kind used as food.

 **Author's Note:** The chocolate chip cookies mentioned in this chapter are my mom's recipe. They are the best chocolate chip cookies in all of the universe.

 **…**

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Willow was the only one there for the first few hours after Dawn got home from summer school. On those days, she was given a banana and some juice, asked if she was okay, and helped with her homework. Fridays were Tara days, and the teenager was given tea and allowed to talk or be quiet as she needed before working on homework. Those were nice, but her favorite school days were Monday and Wednesday.

Those were the Spike days. Like with Tara, there was tea when she got home. It tasted different when Spike made it, and when she'd asked about that, she'd been given a withering look and told there was no such thing as an American who actually knew how to make tea. There were also freshly baked cookies, complete with impossible to carry out threats of horrible dismemberment if she ever revealed that he made them from scratch and not premade dough or a box mix.

If she needed to cry, he was right there with her, holding her and grieving over Buffy just as much as she was, letting her know she wasn't alone in her misery and feelings of guilt. If she needed to talk, he listened. If she needed to be talked to, he told her stories, heavily peppered with foul language and wild hand gestures.

This particular Monday, she was getting home an hour later than usual due to Giles insisting on tutoring her in literature. Considering he could barely look at her, but was still obviously trying to do right by her, she hadn't had the heart to tell him that Spike was already helping her with that subject.

She'd made sure her vampire knew about the tutoring session, so everything was as it normally was when she walked through the door. The smell of hot cookies, chocolate chip this time, filled her as she closed her eyes and inhaled, pushing away thoughts and grief for at least a moment.

"'Lo, Nibblet," Spike called from the kitchen as he pulled a baking sheet from the oven and set it on the stove.

"Hey, Spike."

Dawn dropped her backpack on the floor beside the door and went to the table, where the teapot, cups, jug of milk, and bowl of sugar cubes was already set out. She poured for both of them, putting milk and two cubes in Spike's cup and milk and three cubes in her own before sitting down.

"It's a wonder you don't end up bouncin' off the walls after all that," Spike said, putting a plate of three cookies down in front of her.

He always made exactly a dozen. Three for her, three for him, and three each for Willow and Tara. Giles and Xander never got Spike cookie goodness, and only he and Dawn ever got them fresh from the oven. It made her feel special.

"I know how to hold my sugar," she said haughtily before taking a sip of tea.

Spike laughed and sat down with his own plate of cookies. "That you do, sweet bit, that you do. So, how was it as the Watcher's?"

"Not too bad. He's trying." Dawn sighed. "Just glad to get away from all the Britishy-ness."

The British vampire sitting across from her raised a brow at that. "Yeah, down with the English. America forever, dude," he drawled in a horrible attempt at an American accent.

She giggled and threw a sugar cube at him, which he caught deftly in his mouth. "I meant _stuffy_ Britishy-ness. Punk Britishy-ness is totally of the good."

"Ever so glad you approve." His tone was mocking, but his eyes gleamed with obvious amusement.

She grinned cheekily and, deciding they'd had enough time to cool, took a bite of one of her cookies. Unlike most chocolate chip cookies, including the ones he'd made in the past, these were thick in the center, rather than being uniformly flat. They had a sort of cakiness to them.

"Mmmm. Sooo good. You are amazing." Dawn practically moaned around her mouthful of chocolaty and pecany goodness. Then she had to fight back laughter at the look on Spike's face. _Definitely shouldn't tell Mr. Badass Vampire that he looks adorable with that surprised/shy/preening peacock expression._ "You know Willow and Tara are never going to believe these came from a box mix."

He just shrugged and ate one of his own cookies. "Think Tara at least has cottoned on to the fact that I know my way around a kitchen. Finish up your snack so we can get the homework out of the way."

He seemed more amused than irritated. Dawn eyed him carefully, trying to figure out if he was drunk or if Willow had been using magic on him again. After the Xander Licking Incident – and really, Xander should have been grateful. The demon bite on his shoulder would totally have gotten some kind of icky infection if Spike hadn't licked it clean after going a little crazy from near starvation – Willow had decided the depressed vampire needed the magical equivalent of happy pills. He'd ranted and raved at her after the fact, and she'd promised to never do it again, but sometimes Willow did things anyway if she thought she was right.

 _Drunk_ , Dawn decided. But just enough to be fairly mellow. She wondered, not for the first time, if there was such a thing as AA for vampires. Not that mellow Spike was bad, but if he got completely sloshed he had a tendency to either start crying or do disturbing things like the time he'd called Giles an attractive man before kissing him and passing out.

The crying she could handle. If anyone had the right to sob like a baby over Buffy, it was the two of them. The watcher smooching, though, had just been gross and traumatic, especially since she'd been close enough to see that there had been tongue involved. _Now if it had been_ Xander _getting drunken vampire smoochies… yeah, no. Hot, but Spike would've ended up dusty._

Dawn finished up her snack, and the two of them went to the living room for the next step of their usual after school ritual. She sat on the couch with her homework spread out on her lap and Spike's arm loosely draped across her shoulders while he channel surfed.

After every math problem she solved, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, studying her vampire and trying to gauge how he was doing. He'd started taking better care of himself. He was still a lot thinner than he should have been, but didn't look like a stiff wind could blow him over anymore. So he was eating again, and had gone back to touching up his roots. He wasn't bothering with gel though, leaving the platinum tips to just start to corkscrew, possibly as a "screw you" to Xander and his demented death sheep comments.

However much booze he had downed earlier in the day had mellowed him out, but he didn't really look happy. He hadn't looked happy for even a second since Buffy had… gone away. Not that it had been all that common with him before that.

 _He's never exactly been all happiness and cheer,_ she reminded herself. Except… that wasn't actually true, was it? She frowned as the monk created memory of her first meeting with Spike popped into her head.

It had been a few days before the Halloween when Buffy went all swoony princess. Dawn had stupidly snuck out after sunset to retrieve the Barbie she'd accidentally left at a friend's house, and had managed to get there and start back without any problems. She'd been only a few yards from home when Spike had appeared from behind a tree in vamp mode and had grabbed her.

She'd been convinced she was going to die, but hadn't wanted to go out without a fight, no matter how pathetic. So she'd stomped on his foot. To her complete and utter shock, he'd let her go and had laughed. Not at her or maliciously, but like a child who had been expecting Brussel sprouts only to find his favorite candy instead. She still remembered their short conversation after that.

" _You certainly have moxie, pigeon, I'll give you that," he said, both his voice and now human features full of glee. "Was gonna feed you to Dru, but with that much spice, you'd likely give her indigestion. Off with you."_

 _Her jaw dropped. "Y-you're letting me go?"_

" _Well, I s'pose_ I _could eat you. I've a liking for spicy things." He tilted his head and looked her up and down. It should have been scary, but he still looked absolutely delighted that a young girl had had the courage to try fighting back. "Course, you look like the kind of chit who'd kick a bloke in the goolies on the way down, and I've a lady at home to satisfy."_

 _She wrinkled her nose and let out an "ew" of disgust, which just made him laugh again._

" _You're too much of a li'l bit of a nibblet to be worth the bother. Now toddle off to big sis, yeah?" He held out his hand and made a walking gesture with his fingers._

"You alright, Bit?"

Spike's voice from the here and now pulled Dawn from her reverie. He was looking at her with that same head tilt, but his eyes were dull with guilt and grief instead of dancing with a cheerful zest for life.

"I'm fine," she mumbled, glancing back down at her homework.

 _When did he lose it?_ she wondered. It had taken a blow when Dru had left him, but he'd still had enough to tease Angel when her sister's broody ex had turned up to interrupt cocoa time. The whole thing with the commandos and the chip had definitely had a hand in snuffing out his inner sense of joy, but it had started to come back once he realized he could fight demons.

 _The Scoobies did this,_ she reluctantly admitted to herself. The commandos had taken something wild and free and had muzzled it, but he had been adjusting to that. It was the nasty, hateful words and constant rejection that had finalized the transformation from a dangerous but happy wildcat into a defensive, prickly hedgehog of snark. To be fair, the snark had always been there, but before it had been mostly overshadowed by an almost childlike delight in the world.

She glanced back up at him when she realized the TV had been stopped on some random toddler show instead of flickering from channel to channel. He was watching her intently, like a cat studying a mouse hole.

Under the unnerving stare, the words she always promised herself she wouldn't say popped out, just like they did every day. "You don't have to stay with me. I'd understand if you had something else you wanted to do."

He looked away, but not before she saw the surge of pain in his eyes. "Not gonna leave you alone," he said quietly. "All kinds of nasties can get in even without an invitation. Won't leave you to be hurt."

He didn't say it, but she knew the most dangerous "nasty" of all was depression. He wouldn't leave her alone to be swallowed up by it, just like she did her best to make sure it didn't eat him alive either.

She opened her mouth to repeat her assurances that he could leave whenever he wanted. She hated herself for it, but she always had to say it. She always had to push at him, to get the reassurance that no matter what, he wouldn't leave. Sometimes, just once or twice was enough, but other times, she couldn't stop herself until she'd pushed him to the point of anger.

Before the words could pour out again, everything went gray and swirly. She felt herself pitch forward, heard Spike's worried shout, and then everything went black.

" _Dawn!"_

Dawn. That was her name. She was Dawn. It floated in the darkness with her, the subtle difference in the vowel sound important for some reason. Only two people said it that way. One she didn't want to deal with right now. The other….

" _Dawn? Nibblet?"_

She fought her way towards consciousness.

 **...**

* * *

 **...**

"Dawn!"

Spike slid forward off the couch and onto his knees in a blur of motion, just fast enough to catch the girl before she hit the floor.

"Dawn? Nibblet?"

He cradled her close and gently tapped the side of her face, trying to wake her without hurting her. _Bloody buggering hell!_ _What's wrong with her?_ For a panicked moment he wondered if he'd cocked things up and somehow mistook rat poison for flour or sugar or something.

 _Don't be a daft git,_ he thought to himself in annoyance. _The witches aren't going to have soddin' rat poison in something that says "Sugar" on it. 'Sides, would've smelled off and wouldn't have cooked up proper. Now stop being a panicking nance and figure out what's wrong with the li'l bit._

She didn't smell sick, injured, or poisoned, but her scent was… fading? He looked her over in confusion, his eyes widening in shocked horror when he saw her hands. They were turning transparent.

"Bit!" He shook her and gave her a slap across the face just hard enough to send a twinge of pain zapping through his head. "Don't you fade away on me!"

"S-Spike?" Dawn's eyes fluttered open. "W-what's wrong? You look scared."

A tiny part of him was indignant that she would dare to suggest that the Big Bad was scared, but most of him was too busy being pants-shittingly terrified to pay that part any mind. He couldn't lose her. He had promised to protect her. She was part of Buffy. She was _his_. His Dawn. His Nibblet.

"Spike?"

Dawn lifted her hand, freezing for one moment when she got a look at it. Then the moment broke and she started screaming. She scrambled away from him and got to her feet, staring at her hands and making soft animal whimpers.

"Wha-what's ha-happening? I-I'm disappearing. I'm gonna fade away…."

"No!" he shouted, jumping to his feet and pulling her tightly against him. "I won't let you fade away, Dawn. Fight it!"

Her knees buckled, dragging them back down to the floor. She squirmed suddenly, and he eased his hold on her just enough for her to twist and sink her teeth into his arm. It wasn't just a bite to muffle sobs or try to work through pain. She took a chunk out of him, then looked up in glassy-eyed shock, his blood all over her face as she swallowed something.

"Nib-"

Before he could even finish the pet name, she exploded in a shower of green sparks.


	2. Chapter 2: Reformation

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Two: Reformation**

 **Author's Note:** A couple of lines from the Angel episode Destiny are used in this.

 **…**

It was pointless, he knew it was, but Spike couldn't stop himself from trying to grab at the scattering green motes that had once been a young girl, calling out her name and begging her not to leave him. Miraculously, as if they'd heard and understood his desperate plea, the sparks of energy stopped moving, held in stasis for one frozen moment. Then they came at him like angry wasps, stinging his skin as they pelted against it before passing through.

A crazy babble of thoughts swirled through the vampire's mind, along with the realization that Dawn's bits were scattered all through him. _Cut her out. Who needs algebra in the real world anyway? Does that cute lifeguard at the community pool even know I exist? I miss my sister. I miss my slayer. In his blood. Bleed her out. Put her back together with superglue and duct tape. Good as new. Right as rain, mate. Duct tape mummy Nibblet._

He felt hysterical laughter trying to bubble up at that last thought, but he ruthlessly fought it down. He had to think. Had to-

Peace. Everything was peaceful and still, his tumbled thoughts shut down to bask in a strange green, pink, and golden glow.

 _Is she real?_ an achingly familiar voice whispered in his mind. _Is she yours?_

A fierce, snarled _yes_ was the automatic answer to both questions. She wasn't just some bloody damn key. She was a girl. His girl. The voice should have known that. She was the one who had put Dawn in his care. _'Til the end of the world, Slayer. She's mine until the end of the world._

Pain. As sudden as the peace. Itchy, burning, agonizing pain. Like every bone in his body being smashed to pieces and every muscle seizing up while ants chewed their way out of him. Pain from a throat screamed raw and bloody. And then, blessed oblivion.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Despite being thousands of motes of energy, Dawn was strangely aware of herself at first. That awareness started to fade as the jumbled bits of her drifted apart, each little spark going its own way. She would dissipate, become nothing and everything all at once. No one could ever leave her again because she would be the one who was gone.

 _Dawn!_ Her name was shrieked with raw terror and pain while a hazy pinkish gold glow swirled through the emerald particles of her existence. _Don't you leave me, you bloody stupid chit. I'll show you what being ripped to shreds really means if you don't mind me and get your arse back here!_

Spike. Spike needed her. He'd dust himself if she wasn't there. He'd just walk out into the sunlight or starve himself. Like before, when he hadn't been able to tolerate the sight of any kind of blood because it reminded him of hers.

The sparkles of her stopped their movement, held still by the remnants of her will. The pinkish gold blob that was Spike – and how weird was that? Why was a badass punk vampire pinkish gold of all colors? – had stopped flailing after her as soon as she stilled, but a haze of that color still filled the spaces between her scattered parts, helping to hold them together. Being green glitter bits had been expected, but none of the crazy people describing her had ever mentioned the pinkish gold. It had to be new.

Suddenly, she remembered what she'd done just before exploding, and was momentarily glad she was in a form that couldn't vomit. She'd been acting on some kind of weird instinct, a compulsion so strong she couldn't stop even as it utterly grossed her out. She hadn't just bitten Spike. She'd ripped out a chunk and _eaten_ it. There had been the expected raw meat flavor with a weird honey and pomegranates aftertaste, almost as if she'd somehow tasted his very essence. And now the same pinkish gold that seemed to be her vampire was a hazy part of her.

A new compulsion, but one she knew she could fight if she wanted to, came over her. She could let herself dissipate away and hurt people the way she'd been hurt, or she could…. She made her choice and dove towards the pinkish gold, the fact that she had some of the same as a part of her allowing her to burrow inside.

A strange babble of thoughts went through her head, but even with some of them being her own, she was more focused on the sudden feelings of warmth and safety. It was like being curled up with a large cat. A cat who could turn on her and eat her, but wouldn't because it had decided that she belonged to it. It made her think of the scrapbook she kept under her bed, full of pictures and articles about predators adopting prey animals, including a lioness who had tried taking care of a baby antelope.

 _Is she real?_ It was Buffy's voice. She wanted to call out to her, to tell her that she was real, and that she needed her big sister, but she knew the question wasn't for her. _Is she yours?_

 _YES!_ The affirmative was practically roared, sending her burrowing deeper within the pinkish gold, rolling in it, making it a larger part of her.

She knew, somehow, that what was happening right now would change her. She had been made out of Buffy, but that wasn't enough to hold her to human form indefinitely without her sister there to reinforce it. Buffy was still a part of her, would always be a part of her, but now there was more. She would be different, but still Dawn in all the ways that mattered.

She let go and let herself be remade.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

"Bit?" Spike croaked hoarsely as he came to. His throat felt like he'd been gargling broken glass and hot peppers, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that his little bit was there, flesh and blood, curled up on the floor a few feet away from him.

He groaned as he forced himself up onto his hands and knees to crawl to her. _Christ, I've felt better after one of Angelus's more creative punishments._ At least nothing actually seemed to be broken.

He stopped only a few inches from Dawn, his outstretched hand hovering just over her hair. Her hair…. It seemed shorter now, a few inches of the glossy, dark brown length swallowed up by corkscrew curls. He gently pulled one out, straightening it out to the former length, then watched it sproing back when he let it go.

 _Okay… so, eating vampires and exploding is apparently a cheaper way to get a home perm._ He knew even as he thought it that it was one of the stupidest things to ever flit through his head, and he'd once had the closing credits song from a children's show with a person in an elephant suit stuck in there for a year and a half. Still, it distracted him for a second from the most likely reason for her sudden case of poodle-itis.

He took a deep breath to steady himself, but that only made things worse. Her scent was different. Joyce was still there and Buffy, but as if they were both somehow her mother. And the only hint of Hank Summers came through the Buffy smell. He leaned in closer and breathed deeply, tongue curling in his mouth as he both tasted and scented the air around her. According to her scent, her father… her father was…

 _There's no belonging or deserving. You can take what you want, have what you want, but nothing is yours._ Angelus's words from over a century ago, swirling through his head. _Like I told you, boyo, nothing is yours. Not Dru, not even yourself._

He scooped Dawn up in his arms and held her tight, frantically petting her newly curly hair as he rocked slightly and babbled to himself.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

The first thing Dawn noticed as she slowly came back to herself was that she was being held. The second was that someone was petting her hair and babbling at her.

"Mine, mine, mine," the babbler whispered frantically. "She's mine now, and they can't change it. Mine. Not even Angelus can take her away. They can beat me to a soddin' pulp and keep us apart, but she'll still bloody well be _mine_!"

She squirmed a little, more to let Spike know she was awake than to get away from him, even if he was being weird. Well, weird _er_ , anyway. He immediately pushed her away, but only enough so he could look her in the eyes. His were wide and shocky, bits of yellow flecked through the blue as if he was fighting not to switch to his vamp face.

She opened her mouth to say something, but was distracted by a curly tendril of hair brushing against her cheek. Spike winced and backed away from her a little when she brought her hand up to slide through her hair.

"It...it's curly," she said, blinking in surprise.

"Yeah. Um… sorry about that, Bit. You must'a inherited from me." His eyes had gone back to solid blue with more of a wild look, and he seemed to now be fighting off a case of hysterical giggles.

"'S'okay if you want to straighten it. God knows I can't stand the bloody things." He did that little head tilt thing of his again and looked her over. "Gotta say, they do look good on you, though. Long enough that Harris won't call you a demented sheep."

The sheer grumpiness and relative normality of that last sentence startled a laugh out of her. "I-I think I'll keep it this way."

 _Must'a inherited it from me._ The words circled through her mind. _Must'a inherited it from me._ She didn't really feel any different. All of her memories included her hair being straight until now, so they hadn't been altered by being reformed. Had it just been her body? Had she been remade as Spike's daughter?

"I… am I?" She reached up to touch her face. Did it look any different? _Oh, God, do I still look like me?_

"Sh, sh, it's okay, Nibblet," Spike said, pulling her hands from her face. "Except for the hair, the only difference seems to be your scent. You've still Buffy and your mum in you, but your absentee wanker of a father… isn't anymore."

She swallowed hard and tried to get her breathing under control. She knew what he was trying to tell her, but couldn't stop the words that spilled out of her mouth laced with false happiness. "You… you mean he showed up?"

Spike flinched at that, and Dawn could have kicked herself. Why had she said that? He didn't have a soul, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell he had feelings. Big neon sign somewhere inside to tell him that people are so _not_ part of a nutritiously balanced breakfast? Nope. Emotions that could be stomped on the ground under one's heel? Absolutely.

She slowly reached out to him and rubbed one short lock of just curling platinum hair between her thumb and index finger. Soft. That must be why her conditioner kept mysteriously running out sooner than it should. She'd get mad about that later.

"My dad isn't absentee anymore. He's right here with me."

Spike nodded jerkily, then abruptly grabbed her shoulders, accidently knocking her arm away in the process. "You can't tell them. No one can know."

She pulled away from him, hurt and confused. _He… he doesn't want me? Why doesn't he want me?_ That didn't make any sense. Why had he been babbling about no one taking her away from him if he didn't want her? Was he embarrassed that some mystical weirdness had made him her father after she'd gone all Hannibal Lector on him?

"No, no, no," he said in immediate response to her pulling back. "'S'not like that, Li'l Bit. Not ashamed of you. Right proud actually. But… you know what the others think of me. Don't want them lookin' at you and seein' me. Got that?"

She nodded slowly, believing him. She didn't know if it was the lack of a soul or something else, but it never immediately occurred to him to lie to spare people's feelings. It usually took him a few seconds at least to figure out if it might be a good idea, and then his lies were pathetically obvious. This sounded like truth, and even made sense.

Tara would understand, but the others? Xander would call Spike a disgusting, evil _thing_ and accuse him of corrupting her. Then they'd drive him away, never mind that he watched over, read to her at night so she could sleep, and even packed her lunch for school on the days when Tara and Willow had early morning classes. Spike was part of her now, and they would think it was obscene.

"Okay, I won't tell them. But I'm keeping the hair," she said with a defiant head shake. "And if Xander calls me a sheep, I'll… I'll call him a bloody wanker."

Spike laughed at that and flashed her a shaky grin. "That's my girl."

Then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped over towards her, flattening them both to the floor. Before Dawn could react, she slipped into unconsciousness as well.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

He was there, at the tower, looking up at where Dawn was waiting. The slayer was fighting Glory, and Doc was nowhere to be seen. This time, he wouldn't be too late. This time, he'd keep his promise. He'd keep Dawn safe, and Buffy wouldn't die. He'd save them both.

He ran towards the stairs that would lead him up the tower, only to stop in confusion when a familiar door suddenly blocked his way. He opened the door and walked through, immediately closing it behind him. _Mustn't let bugs or Glory minions into Joyce's nice, clean house._

It looked and felt mostly like the Summers home, the only differences being the strange, almost empty feeling and the bassinet set up next to the couch. _Is that…_ Dawn _?_ His attention was drawn from the baby in the mini crib by a sound from upstairs, and then all thoughts of anything else were driven right out of his head by the sight of _her._

"Buffy," Spike whispered hoarsely.

She walked down the stairs with determination, completely focused on him. He tensed, waiting for her to tear into him for failing her. Waiting for her to yell or hit him or both. She shoved him against the door, raised her hand…

… and buried it in his hair as she pulled his head down for a kiss.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Aside from puppets on TV singing about the dangers of eating paint, the house was strangely quiet when Tara got home. It was just dark enough outside that Spike might have taken Dawn out for ice cream, but his coat was still draped over the stair railing, and he was more likely to leave an actual limb behind.

"Dawn? Spike?" She stepped into the living room and gasped. The teenager and vampire were sprawled in a tangled heap on the floor, unconscious.

Their auras were tangled together as well, though that seemed to be slowly sorting itself out. It reminded her of the times she'd watched the auras of a mother and newborn while helping her own mother in her work as a midwife. The thought that Spike might have turned Dawn was there and dismissed before it really had time to form.

She hurried over to the pair of them and knelt beside Dawn. "Dawnie? Sweetie? Wake up." She gently patted the girl's cheek, then shook Spike's arm. "Spike?"

Sudden fatigue hit her like a ton of bricks, and Tara fell across the other two, fast asleep.


	3. Chapter 3: Setting the Stage

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Three: Setting the Stage**

 **...**

Tara knew it was a dream even before she saw the changes to the room that had once belonged to Joyce Summers. Her own things were still there, but Willow's were gone.

"Hey, Tara."

Tara whirled around to face the owner of the voice, her eyes widening at the sight of Buffy standing in the bedroom doorway. A feeling of wonder and peace suffused her as she looked at the other woman's aura. The slayer glowed with something of the divine.

 _She's touched by heaven,_ she thought in awe. _And she's letting me see just a tiny glimpse of it._ It was almost too much. Then the nearly overwhelming feeling was gone, deliberately tamped down so that the woman before her was just Buffy Summers.

 _As if Buffy could ever really be described as just anything._ She hadn't been as close to her as the others, hadn't been hurt as much by her death, but Buffy had stood up for her against her relatives and declared herself family. She would always love her for that.

"What's going on?" Tara asked as Buffy stepped further into the room.

"I… uh… need a really big, teensy bit life-altering favor from you," the slayer said, smiling brightly.

"I… life al-altering?" Tara swallowed hard and sat on the end of the bed. She already knew she would do it – Buffy wouldn't ask for something she couldn't give, not without a very good reason anyway – but she needed a moment to settle herself before agreeing.

"I need you to help with some stuff in this dream world, and it's going to have repercussions in the waking world." Buffy sat down next to her. "You'll end up with a really good friend and cuddle buddy out of it, but…." She looked down at her hands, then back into Tara's eyes, a solemn expression on her face. "You'll never again get an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's to yourself. Spike has, like, radar or something, and anytime you have any, he'll show up and end up eating half of it. With lesser ice creams, you'll have about a sixty percent chance of getting to eat the entire thing, but never with the B and J."

Tara stared at her in jaw-dropped incredulity for a minute before starting to giggle. "So… um… I take it Spike will be this good friend and cuddle buddy? As… as well as moocher of ice cream?"

"Yep. And you guys will watch chick flicks together." Buffy frowned thoughtfully. "Huh. You know, I just realized, he's like the girliest man ever, yet somehow is not the least bit effeminate, despite the eyeliner fetish. Weird. Anyway, it is a bit more complicated than that."

"Yeah," Tara said softly. "I figured it would be. What do you need from me?"

"You, Spike, and Dawn are asleep in the real world. Only about twenty minutes will pass there, but here, it'd be fourteen years. I need you to help raise my sister for those years and take care of my depressed, borderline alcoholic, codependent vampire."

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Spike knew he was dreaming, and he never wanted to wake up. She was alive and warm in his arms, her mouth soft against his own. She'd kissed him once in the real world without a spell being involved, but he'd been too badly beaten at the time to really appreciate it. She'd kissed him other times in his dreams, in thanks for keeping his promise and saving Dawn. Saving them both. It had never felt like this before. Like it was real.

She deepened the kiss, holding him desperately, as if she wanted to devour him. _Not the first Summers to do that,_ he thought, remembering Dawn chomping down on his right arm. _Oh god, Dawn. She's all alone, and I'm off in dream land snogging Big Sis like an enormous git. Need to wake up. Now._

Before he could push Buffy away and try to force himself awake, she pulled back with a wistful smile.

"It's okay. Dawn's asleep, too. She's safe."

He wanted to believe her. He wanted to stay here with her for just a little bit longer, where, for once, he didn't hurt. Was that really too much to ask? _Yeah, it bloody well is. You know that._ As he'd always done when someone he cared about needed him, he shoved aside his own needs and wants. Dawn was all that mattered now.

"Sorry, love. Want to stay, but I have to wake up. My Nibblet needs me."

Buffy sighed softly and took a few steps back away from him. Then she began to glow, the energy coming from her so pure and holy that he was surprised he didn't burst into flames from being so close. She slowly reached out and pressed her hand against his cheek. There was the itchy, nerve jangling feeling like having a cross nearby, but his flesh didn't burn. The doubt, however, did, gone to ash and dust. He knew whatever she told him was the truth, and not just his subconscious playing games with him.

"You're right, she does need you, which is why you're both asleep right now," Buffy said, letting the glow fade away.

Spike slid down the door to sit on the floor, feeling shaky from the display of holy power. His beautiful slayer immediately sat down beside him, close enough that he could easily put his arm around her and hold her. He hesitantly did just that, a sigh of contentment escaping him as she leaned into him and rested her head on his chest. His eyes drifted closed as he basked in her presence.

 _Definitely a dream. If this was the real world and she wasn't… wasn't…._ He couldn't bring himself to even think the word dead. _She'd've punched me in the nose at least five times by now._

"You know, I'm pretty sure I never even thought this when I was alive, much less said it, but I'm really glad that you're short."

Spike's eyes snapped open, and he glanced down at the girl in his arms incredulously, focusing on the short comment and glossing over the "when I was alive" part because it was too painful to think about.

"I am _not_ short," he grumped. "Red's wolfboy and that Jonathon bloke are short. Little bitty bite sized things." He gave her a suggestive look. "Me? I'm fun sized."

Buffy laughed and lightly punched him in the side. "That you are, my fine, feathered, monochrome peacock. Anyway, I'm glad you're you sized. It's nice to cuddle with a man who doesn't make me feel freakishly tiny."

"Nothin' freakish about you, slayer," he murmured, then cocked his head in thought. "Well, except-"

"That I'm being cuddly with you right now and not a complete bitch?" she interrupted wryly.

"Well… I'm not barmy enough to put it like that, but yeah. It's a mite bit out of character, love. If not for your little glowy trick, I'd still think this was a normal, though weird, dream."

"Being dead and in heaven gives a girl a different perspective on things," she said philosophically. "Especially since I sort of exist outside of time right now. I know what's going to happen after I get yanked back to life, and that's a big influence on how I'm reacting to you."

 _Heaven… yanked back to life…._ Those words swirled through his head, the horrifying implications overshadowing everything else she said. _Oh god, someone's going to pull her out of heaven._

"Who?" he snarled, pulling away and getting on his knees in front of her. His hands clamped on her upper arms as he shook her lightly. "Who's gonna try to pull you out? I'll rip their guts out."

 _Tear 'em apart into little pieces while they're still alive. Hear 'em scream like music, choking on their own blood. Rip, slash, tear-_

"Spike!"

Buffy yelling his name and slapping him across the face pulled him out of his murderous thoughts. He glanced away before he could see her expression, sure that it would be shaped by revulsion and horror, but when she gently grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her, there was just sympathy and compassion.

"Sorry about that, but I couldn't get your attention any other way." Her voice was gentle as she continued. "Willow gets it all going because she thinks it's the right thing to do."

Spike jerked back off his knees, sitting on the floor again, shocked and bewildered. " _Red_ is gonna do it? _Why?_ " he asked plaintively.

 _What could possibly make Red think ripping the slayer out of bloody_ heaven _is a good idea?_ He'd have to stop her somehow. If he had to, he could gather up some demons to kill her. _Maybe I can just find a way to talk her out of it._ He didn't want to have her killed. He _liked_ Willow.

Yeah, she'd been right nasty to him along with the rest of the lot when they found out he was in love with the slayer, but he still liked her. She was the shy little thing who'd found the courage to yell at him while he drunkenly held a broken bottle to her face, who had tried to comfort him when he couldn't bite her before bashing him in the head with a lamp.

She'd actually cared when he'd tried to kill himself back when he hadn't known he could still fight demons. And even after his feelings had been outed, she'd apologized to him when Tara had accidentally burned him, and had thanked him for his offer of boozy courage even as she turned it down. And yeah, her attempt at magicking away his depression had left him feeling angry and violated after the fact, but she'd at least been trying to help.

 _Doesn't matter. Kill her if I have to. If it's the only way to keep her from hurting Buffy._

"She thinks I'm in a hell dimension. She's going to think she's rescuing me."

Relief flooded through him. "That's easy enough to fix. I'll just tell her where you are. She pro'ly won't believe me at first, but it should be enough to get her to actually che…" he trailed off mid word as Buffy slowly shook her head.

"You aren't going to remember any of this. You won't even remember that this part of the dream happened, or that you saw me. The things I'm going to tell you that you need to know, you'll just sort of know. And when I get resurrected, I won't remember anything except the feelings of peace, love, and completion."

Spike pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He wanted to hold her instead, but he knew he wasn't good enough to touch her. He shouldn't have even been in her presence. He hadn't been able to save her from death, and he wouldn't be able to save her from being dragged away from her just reward. _Bloody useless._ I _was s'posed to be the one to die on that tower. Not her._

"It's going to be rough for a while, but there are all these prophecies about the warrior, the champion, and the knight, and I just happen to be one them, so, I kinda have to be alive," Buffy said, as if it would make her loss and suffering okay.

She got up on her hands and knees and covered the foot of distance between them, her face only an inch from his own. Her voice was low and husky as she continued speaking. "And with me being all alive-o girl, I'll get to see you avert a mini apocalypse with the incredibly sexy power of," she moved in closer, her breath deliciously warm against his skin as she whispered in his ear, "poetry analysis."

He jerked back as if she'd slapped him, his eyes wide as he started babbling denials. "That can't… I don't know anything about… I'm the big bad, sweets, not some nancy boy poet." His eyes narrowed at her mischievous grin. "You're having me on, aren't you?"

"Oh, no, I was completely serious, it's just adorable how defensive you are about that. There's this doomsday artifact thingy, and the only way to turn it off is with a spell, but the spell is a jumbled up poem in a demon language, except no one knows it's a poem until you figure it out, 'cause it has poemy vibes or something. It has to be unjumbled, interpreted correctly, and then recited with the right rhythm."

Spike tilted his head to the side as he watched her. She clearly didn't want to talk about what Willow was going to do. With a sigh, he let it go.

"So… um… you said me an' the Nibblet are asleep because she needs something? It have to do with me turning her into a poodle?"

She snorted a laugh at his poodle comment. "Kind of. The extra I asked for is a dream world for you and her, where she can grow up from a baby to the age of fourteen with you taking care of her."

"From a…."

He blinked and looked into the living room, at the bassinet he'd seen before Buffy had come down the stairs. _I knew the sprog smelled like Dawn._ _Ugh, and then I let myself get distracted._ By Buffy, but still….

He got to his feet and walked over to the bassinet, looking down at the sleeping infant inside. She was so tiny and delicate. He reached out hesitantly towards her cheek, but pulled back before he could touch her. He swallowed, trying to wet his suddenly dry throat. So tiny… fragile. He could break her in half without even meaning to. He was supposed to take care of her?

Okay, he was actually really _good_ at taking care of people, had done it his whole life and unlife, but none of them had been helpless little infants. _Well, 'cept for Sarah Jane, but I was still human then… and five, so, you know, not actually her main caretaker._ He tried not to think about the fact that she had died of pneumonia at the age of three.

"You… you're gonna help, right, love?" he asked, looking at Buffy as she came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

She slowly shook her head. "I told you. You won't remember even seeing me. I want these to be good memories for you and Dawn, not something you'll both avoid because it's too painful while I'm gone."

"…Oh, right. Yeah. I guess…. So, this… all this," he held out his hand and made a sweeping gesture, "is so the li'l bit can have some extra mem'ries?"

"That's part of it. It won't replace the memories the monks made, and they won't be as strong, but they'll be there. Dawn needs this." She turned away from him, hugging herself as she took a deep, steadying breath. "And so do you. Because when I come back…." She faced him again, pain in her eyes. "If you don't have this, I'm going to end up breaking you. And even with it, it's going to be really close."

Before Spike could even begin to process Buffy's words, much less reply to them, she continued on.

"Also, the dream world years will help you and Dawn adjust to the fact that she's just a teensy bit not quite all the way human anymore."

All thoughts about the slayer blathering some nonsense about breaking him came to a screeching halt, to be the replaced by the idiotic notion that he somehow _had_ actually turned Dawn part poodle. _Don't be daft_ , he scolded himself in irritation. _Not actually a soddin' werepoodle, you git, no matter what the whelp says._

"She's part vampire," he said quietly.

"Just a little bit," Buffy confirmed. "She's alive, obviously, and has a soul, and doesn't have any of the weaknesses and restrictions since there's no actual demon in her. Her genetics are just… different, because she ate a chunk of you and sort of got reformatted. She can do partial game face, though – just the gold eyes and fangs – and she needs to drink vampire blood every once in a while."

" _Vampire_ blood? That's a new one. Unless she needs to drain one dry, it'll prob'ly be mine. Not gonna bring some nasty home for her dinner." The bizarre mental image of a freshly bathed fledgling tied up on the table with an apple in its mouth popped into his head. He sighed and rubbed his face. "Not an ideal situation, but at least she won't be thinking of her own kind as walking happy meals."

"Your blood's what's going to be best for her. You're the equivalent of a nummy human with other vamps being cold piggies."

"Euch." Spike shuddered in revulsion. "That swill is bad enough _warm_. Cold… euch." He shuddered again, thinking of the times he'd ended up choking it down that way, either from being too hungry to wait or too depressed to care. "How much'll she need?"

"That's one of the things you'll just sort of know." She moved close to him again, tucking against his side and sliding her arm under his coat so she could run her hand along the back of his t-shirt. Her fingers drifted up and down his spine, sliding over to the side each time she reached a specific part of his lower back. "Wish I could warn you about that and actually have you remember it," she murmured.

"Eh?" Spike looked at her in confusion as he slid his arm around her shoulders. "Warn me about what, pet? She get to a point when she needs more 'n I can give?"

"No, I was talking about something else. Nothing we can actually do about it now." She sighed and leaned more into him. "Right now, while she's a baby, Dawnie'll need a little bit mixed in whenever she has a bottle. By the time she's thirteen, she'll just need about a cup every two weeks, and it'll stay that way for the rest of her life."

"That sounds doable. Right, okay." He took a deep breath, the reflexive action helping to calm his nerves even though he didn't actually need the air. _God, I need a fag. Is secondhand smoke still bad for munchkins if it's a dream?_ "So, I'm s'posed to raise Nibblet from a sprog in nappies to a teenage ball of hormones by my lonesome? And get us both through it more or less intact?"

"You won't be alone. I've got a helper lined up for you."

Spike stiffened and pulled away from Buffy, his eyes narrowed. "Don't trust me alone with her?" He _knew_ he was being stupid, but he couldn't seem to stop the defensive reaction. "Think I'll just bugger things all up?"

Buffy threw her hands up in exasperation. "I think you like being contrary and bitchy, is what I think. Taking care of a kid is hard enough for a single parent who _isn't_ allergic to daylight. Someone needs to be able to do out of the house daytime stuff with her. That isn't the biggest reason you need someone else here, though."

"Oh? And what _is_ the biggest reason, slayer?"

"You're very social, Spike. You need someone to talk to who can do more than gurgle and poop themselves."

"Yeah, that's why I try not to spend too much time around Harris."

"Hush, you." She shook her finger at him, looking both irritated and amused. "You're also the poster vamp for codependency, so you need someone around who can make you take care of yourself properly."

"I am not codep-" He was cut off by Buffy holding up one finger.

"An inability to tolerate being alone, accompanied by frantic efforts to avoid being alone. You know, like hanging around my group even though we tend to treat you like crap." She lifted a second finger. "Chronic feelings of boredom and emptiness." A third finger went up. "Subordinating your own needs in favor of those you care about." A fourth. "An intense desire for acceptance and affection." Her thumb joined the fingers of her right hand. "Low feelings of self-worth. Those sounding familiar, or do I need to keep going?"

Spike ducked his head and scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor. "Maybe a little familiar," he mumbled. _Am I really_ that _much of a pathetic wanker?_

"Try a _lot_ familiar," Buffy said wryly. "You throw everything you are into taking care of the people you love, even if it hurts you. That's why I know you can be trusted with one more little bit of information. The chip? It won't exist in the dream world."

Spike's hands clenched into fists as he stared blankly at a random patch of floor. _Just a dream world. Not real freedom._ He'd wake up and, in the real world, he'd still have the chip. Humans would still be able to put their filthy paws all over him without having to face the consequences. He'd still be hungry all the time because he couldn't force down more of the wretched pig swill in a day to do more than keep him from wasting away. The only thing that would really change would be his relationship with Dawn.

He could raise her to accept that he saw her kind as nothing but prey. That little girls like her were just yummy little snacks. She was just a baby. By the time she was old enough to be bothered by it, it would be normal for her. But his real world Nibblet would have those memories. Would she be frightened of him if they were filled with mayhem and slaughter? Or would she just hate him?

He took a deep breath, wishing it was filled with sweet, sweet nicotine, and looked up at Buffy. "Won't kill any humans. Unless they're a threat, and there's no other way."

"I know," she said simply, as if the only one who had had any doubts at all was him.

"Buffy, I…. There's something…" he trailed off and looked at the floor again. He didn't have any right to ask for what he wanted.

Angelus's words from all those decades ago still echoed in his mind. Nothing was his. Even Dru hadn't been his, not really. He'd been able to pretend for a long time, but she'd constantly strayed, even after her precious "daddy" had gone away. Her poor, broken mind would completely forget he even existed, and she'd go off chasing after whomever or whatever had caught her fancy. She'd taken what she needed from him, but when he'd needed her, she'd abandoned him for her returned daddykins.

He looked up, startled, at the feel of Buffy's hand wrapping around his.

"I know what you want," she said quietly, leading him towards the couch. "I want it too."

He wrapped his arms around her as they stretched out on the comfortable piece of furniture and breathed in her scent. The spicy smell of slayer mixed with the wildflowers and sunshine that was pure Buffy. He sighed in contentment and just held her, wanting nothing more than to feel her in his arms, where he knew she'd be safe and loved.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Spike jerked awake at the indignant screech of an infant who wanted her way, and wanted it _now_. He flailed to try to keep his balance, but still ended up falling from the couch to the floor in an undignified head.

"Bloody brilliant," he muttered to himself. "Reflexes like a soddin' cat, I have."

He heaved himself to his feet with a grunt and gently scooped the fusing girl from her bassinet. "Hush now, Li'l Bit. Give us a mo', and we'll get you all sorted."

A quick sniff revealed that she was in need a diaper change. _An' it's morning,_ he noted smugly as he saw the amount of light showing through the drawn curtains. That meant he could wake Tara up and have her deal with it. And she couldn't even guilt trip him over it, because, one, he was an evil, soulless vampire and didn't do that whole guilt trip thing… mostly… and two, he'd be busy fixing up her bottle, which meant heating the formula and cutting his hand to get the blood she needed.

"Come on, pigeon, let's go see if Auntie Tara is up," he said, humming cheerfully as he bopped up the stairs with his infant daughter in his arms.


	4. Chapter 4: Snapshots - Part One

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Four: Snapshots – Part One**

 **Author's Note:** At the beginning of each section change – as opposed to PoV change – how long they've been in the dream world will be shown. I was going to try to write Snapshots as just one long chapter, but fourteen years worth of highlights just won't work as one chapter. Next chapter we'll actually get some Dawn PoV once she's old enough to have a point of view.

 **…**

 _ **:Ten Minutes:**_

Once the baby's diaper had been changed, Tara got to work getting herself and Dawn dressed for the day. Her mind was occupied with troubled thoughts as she pulled off her nightgown and replaced it with a blouse and flowing skirt. It wasn't the fact that she was in a dream world – she remembered everything she'd been told, though not the identity of the heavenly being she'd interacted with – that had her uneasy. It was the way Spike's aura had looked when he'd come to wake her up.

She'd known to expect some of the changes. She'd been told that his grief and feelings of guilt over Buffy's death would be muted. There was more to it, though. For as long as she had known the vampire, he'd been a prickly ball of depression, anger, and defensiveness with a layer of fear that he tried to keep hidden away.

When he'd brought Dawn to her to be changed, he'd been… happy, his aura brighter than she'd ever seen it. That in and of itself wasn't a bad thing, but it made her wonder if his memories of the real world had been tampered with. She didn't think a change like that would be possible if he still remembered all the nasty words and treatment that had been heaped on him by the Scoobies.

 _He brought a lot of it on himself,_ she reminded herself, as she always had whenever the feelings of sympathy and kinship she felt for Spike surfaced. She knew what it was like to be told you were evil and worthless. _But… but he actually_ is _evil... And he was ungrateful and betrayed everyone after they took him in and helped him. Is it really fair to hold that against him, though? He's a vampire, and he's been trying so hard to be good…._

Tara sighed and shook her head to clear it. While helping with Dawn was part of her task, the heavenly being had made it clear that her main reason for being here was to take care of Spike. Not to keep him from hurting anyone, but to provide emotional support and to be his friend. If someone in heaven wanted that, than obviously that struggle towards good had been noticed.

 _Okay, so, now to go downstairs, get Dawnie fed, and then poke at the emotional wounds of an emotionally unstable vampire who I'm supposed to end up close friends with. I just hope he doesn't get mad enough at me to fall off the no homicide wagon._ Her lips twitched wryly at the thought that conjured. _I don't think they have a twelve step program for recovering homicidal maniacs._

She took a deep breath, gathered the baby in her arms, and headed down the stairs. In the kitchen, Dawn's bottle – the white formula now tinted pink – sat on the table. Spike was leaning against the counter, gulping down a mug of blood before licking the cut across his right palm with considerably more enthusiasm. He looked disturbingly like a kid getting their favorite dessert after having to eat a particularly icky vegetable.

A defensive look crossed his face when he noticed Tara staring at him. "What, never seen a vampire sink to drinking their own blood before? Tastes a damn sight better 'n vile dead pig."

She glanced away nervously and picked up Dawn's bottle. The little girl latched onto the nipple as soon as it was in her mouth, suckling hungrily. She seemed to agree with her father on the tastiness of his blood.

"W-well, Dawn s-se-seems to like it too, so…." Tara was quiet for a few seconds, then continued. "Y-you're a vampire, I d-don't think it's weird to like your own blood. Pro-probably doesn't work as an actual food source, but…." She shrugged and trailed off again.

Spike blinked and tilted his head slightly as he studied her. Then he gave the cut one last lick and asked, "You want some breakfast?"

"I… um, yes, please."

He pushed away from the counter and went to the refrigerator, pulling out what he needed to make scrambled eggs. Tara watched him as she settled Dawn against her shoulder and gently patted the baby's back. The vampire's confident movements as he chopped up mushrooms and green peppers and whisked eggs spoke of a long familiarity with cooking. She'd suspected for a while now that he knew his way around a kitchen. There was no way the cookies he made in the waking world for Dawn weren't from scratch.

"H-how do you know how to cook?"

She winced as the words popped out, expecting him to take offense at the suggestion that him knowing how to cook was bizarre. Instead, Spike turned to look at her and grinned, the expression making his eyes light up.

"Answered an ad in the paper a couple decades back. Bloke wanted to teach a vampire all his recipes and techniques so they'd last past his lifetime. Never did lose the taste for human food, and I was bored at the time, so…." He shrugged and got out a skillet. "Picked up a bit of a knack for interior decorating the same way."

They fell into an oddly companionable silence as he cooked up enough eggs for two. Tara put Dawn down in her bassinet for an after bottle nap, then got out plates and forks just as Spike finished up at the stove.

"You… um… s-seem to have picked up a l-lot before you ate him," Tara said once they were both sitting at the table together. She hoped her stutter didn't make her sound judgmental. She didn't exactly approve of eating people, but she recognized that vampires were predators specifically designed to hunt and eat humans. It would be like judging Miss Kitty Fantastico for eating mice.

"Didn't eat him, pet. Treated me all decent like, so by the time I learned all he had to teach, he'd become a person."

She frowned in confusion. " _Became_ a person? What was he before?"

Spike looked at her and, while he stayed looking human, the sense of actual humanity faded away, leaving her staring into the cold eyes of a predator. "Food," he said simply. Then the predator that was Spike retreated, bringing back the person that was also Spike as he continued talking.

"Haven't personally met any other vampires this is true of, love, but for me, if I get to know a human well enough, they turn into people. I eat humans, not people." He tilted his head and admitted, "Still _kill_ people if there's a need, but won't eat 'em. And won't do either to humans or people in this world unless there's no choice."

"S-so you know?"

"That this is a dream world?" Spike nodded. "Yeah. Don't know much about it, 'cept that I'm free of that bloody chip and apparently work for the Sunnydale city council as the official protector of the Hellmouth. Few other things, too, but those are the two major bits of knowledge."

"I-I'm a student at UC Sunnydale, j-just like when awake. But it's spring semester instead of summer right now. And… and I know that the-the people here are based on other re-reality people of Sunnydale, with their thought and behavior patterns. Bu-but none of the Scoobies."

Tara felt a muffled pang of loneliness at the thought of Willow. Like with Spike, her feelings about the one she loved had been muted, but not completely suppressed. She missed her girlfriend, but it wouldn't leave her crying in the night on a regular basis, since she knew Willow would be there when she woke up.

 _But Buffy won't be there when Spike wakes up,_ she thought sadly.

They were both silent for a moment before the witch started talking again. She still needed to find out about Spike's waking world memories. "I… um… your aura… it's different. Here in the dream world. Do you… remember….." She trailed off, unsure of how to ask the question. _Hey there, person who is trying really hard not to kill my species, I noticed you aren't a prickly ball of pain and misery. What's up with that?_

Spike looked at her again. "Do I remember what? Getting paralyzed by the slayer, Angelus coming back to make my unlife a living hell while I was still weak and helpless from that, the poof shagging my girlfriend, said girlfriend dumping my sorry arse for not being a sadistic psychopath who wanted to end the world, being so pathetically desperate to be in a relationship that I dated Harmony, the government shoving that chip in my noggin, being tied up and left to starve while your precious Scoobies ate bloody thanksgiving dinner in front of me, being chained up and still starved in the watcher's bathtub, falling in love with my mortal enemy, promising her that I'd protect her sister, and then failing so miserably at it that she had to jump to her death? Nope, don't remember a bit of it. Thanks for asking."

Tara's eyes widened at the recitation, then narrowed in a troubled frown when he mentioned the actions of the others after he'd been chipped. "They-they chained you up in a bathtub and st-starved you?"

He raised a brow at that, surprised that that was what had caught her attention. "Told you something else about that, did they, love?"

"I… uh… I was t-told that… that they h-helped you, and y-you were ungrateful and be-betrayed them." Anger made her stutter worse. She took a deep breath and forced herself to slow down. "What they did, that wasn't right. And they must know it, if they lied to me about it."

"They prob'ly weren't lying from their point of view, pet. I _am_ an evil, soulless vampire, after all, and they didn't stake me or leave me out in the sun to get all extra crispy-like." He shrugged and stabbed at a chunk of scrambled egg with his fork. "Nothing to be done about any of it, and none of that bothers me much right now. It's all sort of… fuzzy. All the jangly edges softened."

"Willow's spell, after the… um… Xander L-licking Incident, it was wrong. I un-understand why you were angry about it. Why aren't you mad about this too?"

She still couldn't believe Willow had done that to him. _I thought she understood, when I told her Dawnie needed to get past her grief over her mother naturally._ Of course, to be fair, Dawn's grief had never led to a hunger crazed vampire being cuddled up against Willow's oldest friend, lapping blood from a nasty, demon-inflicted shoulder wound that was scarily close to his neck. He could have easily ripped Xander's throat out before the chip could fire.

Spike growled softly, his lip curling in disgust. "Red's little happy spell _imposed_ something on me. She just shoved an emotion in there, like those soddin' soldier boys shoved the chip in my brain. This though…." he gestured vaguely and shrugged, "isn't taking anything away or putting anything in. It's just all fuzzed up. Been trying to do that myself for the past few years with enough alcohol to drown an entire herd of elephants. Be a mite bit hypocritical to complain because someone managed to do it for me. And, hey, no hangover to worry about, yeah?"

They settled into silence again, this one awkward as Tara guiltily noticed the darker cast to Spike's aura. She had needed to know what he knew and what he remembered, but she still felt badly about poking at things best left "fuzzed." She tried to think of some way to distract him from the metaphorical hornets' nest she'd jostled and ended up blurting out something she'd often wondered about over the summer in the waking world.

"What…what happens to the human food you eat? I mean, you don't…."

Spike blinked at her, glanced down at the forkful of eggs halfway between his plate and his mouth, and blinked again.

"Oh, well… huh… actually…." He frowned slightly in confusion, as if looking for what should have been an obvious answer to something he'd never bothered to wonder about. Then he just shrugged and grinned at her, his good mood restored. "Haven't the foggiest, pet."

* * *

 **…**

* * *

 _ **:Two Days:**_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Whfft_

 _Pop_

The tiniest clench of her hand around her pen was the only outward sign of annoyance Tara allowed herself to show. _Just ignore it. You can do it. Ignore it and work on your homework._ _He doesn't even_ like _magic, so it's for his own good that you're refusing to do this. Also, he needs to cut back. Addiction isn't good for anyone._

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Whfft_

 _Pop_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Whfft_

 _Pop_

"Will you stop that?" she hissed, glaring at the vampire sitting across from her at the kitchen table. Her glare was met with a sweet smile and a slight widening of deceptively innocent looking blue eyes.

"But, Tara love, _you_ were the one who said I shouldn't smoke even in the basement with Li'l Bit being at her bittiest. _You_ were the one who suggested I just chew gum instead during the day. Course, if it bothers you so much… well, I trust _your_ magic. You're a good girl. You respect the magic and its consequences."

Exactly three loud, obnoxious chews of gum. A bubble blown. The bubble drawn back into the mouth and popped before the cycle started all over again.

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Whfft_

 _Pop_

"You are evil," Tara accused. That, of course, just earned her one of those grins that lit up his face with gleeful joy, followed by more malicious gum chewing.

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Snap_

 _Whfft_

 _Pop_

"Fine, I'll do the air purifier spell so you can smoke in the house!" she finally shouted. Then she clamped her hands over her mouth, appalled that she'd actually shouted at someone.

Instead of the anger she would have gotten from her relatives for daring to raise her voice, Spike looked proud. Of her.

* * *

 **…**

* * *

 _ **:Four Months:**_

The instant the sun set, Spike was out the door to do his nightly patrol. The instant after that, Tara was getting together all of the supplies she'd hidden away for the disinvite spell. He was going to be so hurt and angry when he found out, but it was the only way to keep him out of the house for the night.

 _It's for his own good,_ she reminded herself grimly as she got everything ready. Over the past four months, Spike had become increasingly more hyper-focused on Dawn and, to a lesser extent, Tara herself. He was so intent on taking care of them that he hadn't been taking care of himself. She'd lost count of the number of times he'd passed out on the couch from sheer exhaustion after staying awake for days at a time, and she was constantly having to remind him to eat.

 _The fact that pig's blood is apparently really disgusting isn't helping with that last part,_ she thought with a slight frown. She'd caught him "seasoning" the blood with a couple of drops of holy water just the day before in the hopes that it would burn out his taste buds long enough to down it. Luckily, she'd been able to grab it from him and dump it down the sink before he could actually drink it. _I can work on something tonight to make it less nasty._ If she managed it, maybe he'd forgive her faster for the disinvite.

…

Spike hurried home after six hours of keeping Sunnydale safe from demons and his own kind. He loved the fighting, but he didn't really like leaving his girls home by themselves. He was the only vampire who could get in since the house was in Tara's name, but there were other dangers.

Most demons didn't actually need an invitation, plus there were the more mundane dangers. What if Dawn just stopped breathing, or something? Babies did that sometimes. He shuddered at the thought. He hated not being able to breathe, and he didn't even need to. How much worse would that be for a tiny little baby who _did_ need to?

Or what if Tara had made herself some dinner and accidentally chopped off her hand and bled to death, or something? Okay, so that one wasn't very likely, but what if she'd decided on a bath, slipped, and had broken her head open like a melon? There could be Tara brains all over the bathroom, and no one would be watching the Nibblet, and she'd start crying, and no one would be there for her, and she'd drown in her own snot, which was probably the most disgusting way ever to die, and…

 _Okay, that is enough of enough, mate. They're not going to spontaneously combust just because you aren't there…. Oh god, do babies spontaneously combust? Why don't they put these things in the bloody manuals? Go on and on about developmental milestones and whatnot, but not one bleedin' word about infant combustion rates._

He ran the rest of the way home, nearly smacking into the door before he could stop his forward momentum. Before he could get his keys out, Tara opened the door from inside.

"Spike, listen, I-"

As soon as the door had opened, Spike tried to go inside... and couldn't. His mind went completely blank for a couple of seconds. He vaguely noticed Tara's lips starting to move, but he couldn't comprehend what she was saying. What was this? Had the witch set up some sort of anti-demon barrier that she didn't realize kept out vampires as well? Even as he wondered, he knew that wasn't the case. He knew the difference in feel between a barrier spell and a threshold where he wasn't invited.

He took a step back and looked down, staring at his hand as if it belonged to someone else as he slowly reached out to touch the invisible barrier. He swallowed hard, remembering the last time he'd been barred from this house. Or rather, from the waking world version.

He would have understood Buffy doing it after he'd chained her up, but the timing hadn't been right. She had left his invitation unrevoked during a time when he had had both the means and desire to kill her, but had taken it away when she'd discovered something like him had dared to fall in love with her.

He loved Dawn and thought of Tara as a friend. Had that frightened her? Did she think he was a danger to them both? What human rule had he broken that was so terrible that she'd do this to him?

"Why?" he whispered hoarsely. "Why did you? What… what did I…?"

Tara sighed softly, and he looked up at her, confused by the mingled looks of compassion, guilt, and determination on her face.

"You didn't hear a word I said, did you?"

He just stared at her, wide-eyed. He remembered her lips moving, but nothing of what she had actually said.

"At five a.m., you're officially invited back into this house," Tara said. "Until then, you are going to go do something that doesn't involve me and Dawn or killing things."

Spike blinked at her, trying to process what she was saying. The delayed invitation would work. At exactly five in the morning, he'd be able to get into the house again. That calmed him down a little. He wasn't being permanently banished. Did she have some weird, witchy thing going on that would be ruined by his presence? She could have just _told_ him that, and he would have stayed outside. Despite the way he sometimes acted – usually out of sheer boredom – he was _not_ a child and didn't really appreciate being treated like one in this particular situation. Then the second part of what she'd said registered.

"I'm s'posed to be doing _what_ now?"

"Whatever you want, as long as it doesn't involve us or work," Tara insisted calmly. She'd been around the vampire long enough now that – with him at least – her stutter was almost gone. "Spike, in the past four months, you haven't set foot outside of this house except to patrol and to smoke a few times before I did the air filter spell. That isn't healthy for anyone and especially not for someone with serious codependent tendencies."

"I am _not_ bloody codependent!" Spike snapped, feeling a weird sense of déjà vu at the denial. He didn't know why, but he almost expected Tara to launch into a list of all of the symptoms that pretty much fit him to a T.

Instead, she just gave him a look that clearly said she knew they both knew better. He glanced down at his feet and mumbled, "Okay, maybe just a little bit. There's nothing wrong with that."

"No, there's nothing wrong with needing to take care of people," the witch agreed gently. "But you can't do that if you don't take care of yourself, too. So, from now on, you aren't allowed in this house on Friday nights. You need to go out and have some you time. Maybe make some male friends, or something."

"Don't particularly want any male friends, love."

There were a few exceptions, but, by and large, Spike didn't really much care for the other members of his gender. Fathers beat sons for daring to prefer playing dollies with their sisters to sporting with other boys, and then died from the same sickness that killed those sisters, leaving their grieving widows with no one but an eight-year-old boy to pick up the pieces. Boys picked on smaller-statured dreamers. Men mocked terrible poets and made up nasty little nicknames.

And if you were ever stupid enough to idolize – to nearly worship – another man, he would betray you the instant he realized he wasn't the only sun your little world revolved around. He would especially hate that the other sun was brighter in your eyes, and he would take it away from you, all because he couldn't stand not being the center of attention. And when you tried to fight to get her back, he would prove that nothing was yours. Everything belonged to him. Even her. Even you.

And then the poncy git would have a soul shoved right up his arse and abandon you.

"Spike?" Tara's soft voice and gentle grip on his shoulder pulled him from his thoughts of the past. "Are you okay?"

"Just peachy, pet, thanks ever so for asking," he responded sarcastically. "Of course I'm not soddin' okay. I've been disinvited from my home, for my 'own bloody good' apparently, and can't even pop in for half a tick to make sure my sprog hasn't spontaneously combusted."

"'Sponta'…? Why would you think Dawn would-"

"Well, why wouldn't she? It's all spontaneous like and all, in'nit? I mean, it's right there in the bloody name!" he pointed out defensively. Okay, it was a really stupid worry, and he knew that, but that didn't keep it from floating around in his mind. He blamed his own fairly combustible nature for it.

"Yeah…. I think that kind of proves my point. You're kind of going a little bit crazy." Tara's voice was soft and soothing, the tone the same he himself had used so many times when Dru was at her looniest. She took a deep breath, the guilt and determination from earlier showing in her face once more. "I _need_ you to do this for me, Spike. I won't do the disinvite spell anymore, but I need you to take Friday nights off from taking care of me and Dawn. Okay?"

He sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping in defeat. After four months of living together, she'd managed to suss out one of his biggest weaknesses. Unless it would impact their safety in a negative way, he never had been able to say no when a female he cared about needed something.

* * *

 **…**

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Spike was stomping angrily through the nearest cemetery, muttering to himself and gesturing wildly.

"Stupid bint, trying to 'fix' me or something. Nothing bloody _wrong_ with me."

 _Lyin' to yourself now, mate? All sorts of things wrong with you, and you know it. 'S why no one ever really wants you around. Not even Mu-_ He shied away from that thought, both mentally and physically. A move which sent him sprawling backwards over a headstone. He landed with his back on the grave, his butt against the headstone and his legs draped over it.

"Oh, brilliant. _That_ was dignified."

He snorted in disgust and shook his head. He and whatever shreds of dignity he had once had had long since parted company.

He sighed and just stared up at the stars. He missed Dawn, both the baby version and the teenager back in the waking world. He just wanted to be with her, to watch her grow up. _Only chance I'll ever have of really having a sprog of my own. She'll still be mine when we wake up, but no one but the three of us will know it. They won't let me be around her any more than they already tolerate._

He sighed again and put his hands over his face. He was tired and stressed out and, bugger it, _hungry_. He could just nip on over to a bar, strut about, flirt with some sweet young honey and lead her off to an alley. Then he'd drain her dry, fresh human, straight from the tap. Coppery and rich and full of life and the very essence of the girl.

 _Said I wouldn't._ But, god, he wanted to. That was part of the reason he'd been staying around the house all the time. Mostly it was because of what Tara had said, but in part it was to keep himself away from the humans. Tasty little happy meals running all about, kept safe and whole only because he knew Dawn would hate him if he went back to feeding on them.

 _She wouldn't even know,_ the traitorous little thought flitted through his mind. And it wasn't even like he'd be killing a real person. Not even a real human. They were just dream creations based on templates of people from other realities.

 _But they still have the thoughts, feelings, and mem'ries of being those people. Kinda like being a vampire only, you know, without the chewy demon center. Well, 'cept for the actual vampires in this dream world…._

He took in and exhaled several slow, deep breaths, the feeling of air filling and then leaving his lungs oddly comforting. He wondered, not for the first time, if his obsession with breathing was just one of the strange human behaviors he'd never been able to shake off, or if it was related in some way to the claustrophobia he'd ended up with after starting his unlife face down in an already occupied coffin six feet in the ground.

Even after more than a century, he still had nightmares about that. Poor mad, darling Dru. She'd been so obsessed with doing things right. She'd gone through the trouble of digging up a grave, but had forgotten to take out the original occupant before tossing him in the coffin and burying it again.

He sighed yet again and forced his thoughts away from that long ago night. He had said he wouldn't kill any humans in this world unless he had to in order to keep Dawn and Tara safe. Being reckless and impulsive had pretty much been his MO since the night he first caught Angelus with Drusilla, but he had excellent self-control when he actually gave enough of a damn to exercise it. Dawn was worth the effort.

 _Well, now that that's all sorted, time to figure out what to do with myself. Doubt moping about in a cemetery and traipsing down the more traumatic part of memory lane is what the witch had in mind with all of this._

A sudden thought occurred to him, and his eyes widened, a tiny ember of hope flaring in his unbeating heart. This was a dream world. It was different from the Sunnydale of waking reality. What if…? Did he dare let that tiny hope grow into something larger?

He took a deep breath, gathering his resolve, and got to his feet. He had to know. He would go to the Bronze and find out if this version still had those fantastic onion flower things.

* * *

 **…**

* * *

The next morning, Tara wasn't surprised when she went to Dawn's room and found the crib empty. Normally she took care of the morning feeding and diaper change, but she'd been pretty sure that, after the enforced all night separation, Spike would immediately go to his daughter as soon as he could get back in the house.

That belief was confirmed when she went downstairs and found Spike curled up asleep on the couch with the baby gently cradled against his chest. An empty bottle sat on the coffee table next to a mug that smelled of the remnants of hot chocolate rather than blood. A nearly empty bag of marshmallows had been closed with a twist tie and left on the floor beside the couch.

Tara winced at the sight of it since it had been unopened as of last night. He had to have been feeling pretty badly to indulge in that much of a marshmallow binge. _At least it wasn't a whiskey binge… though it's entirely possible that was what he was up to last night._

She was pulled from her thoughts by Dawn's soft fusing. She quietly went to the couch, but when she tried to pick her up, Spike growled in his sleep and held his little girl tighter.

"Mine," he mumbled.

Tara smiled softly and gently shook his shoulder. "Spike? Wake up. I think Dawnie needs a diaper change."

"Huh, wha?" Spike blinked his eyes open and stared at her blankly for a few seconds before wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Euck. Yeah, she needs a fresh nappy right quick."

"I've got it."

This time, the vampire allowed her to pick Dawn up. She took her upstairs to the changing table and quickly and efficiently got the infant taken care of. By the time she got back downstairs, Spike was up and about and pouring blood into a mug. She was just fast enough to get Dawn into her bassinet and snag the mug before he could put it into the microwave.

"Oi, give it! I didn't put anything weird in this time," Spike said indignantly, trying to get the mug back from her.

She dodged out of his way and quickly pulled a small vial of red liquid out of her pocket. "Just give me a second. You'll like this, I promise."

He eyed her suspiciously but didn't try to liberate his breakfast as she set it on the counter. She opened the dropper lid on the vial and very carefully put a single drop of the liquid into the pig's blood. She sealed the vial again, then held out both it and the mug to Spike. The look of stunned disbelief on his face made it clear he'd already smelled the difference.

"What… what did you…?"

"I put a spell using the laws of contagion on this vial. If you put a drop of what's in it into another liquid – preferably blood, otherwise the effects are diluted – it will change that liquid to match what's in the vial. And it will be identical to the state it was in when the vial was filled. So, in this case, Tara blood, still warm and fresh."

Spike slowly took the two items from her, immediately pocketing the vial. He stared into the mug, looked up at her, then back down at the mug. She expected some kind of snarky comment along the lines of it being about time or that she owed him after last night.

Instead, he quietly uttered, "Thanks, pet."

* * *

 **…**

* * *

 _ **:Six Months:**_

It was just another Friday night, and Spike once again found himself hanging out at the Bronze, enjoying a beer and fried oniony magnificence. He still wasn't happy about having to be away from home for the entire night, but he had to admit it was fun, especially since he didn't have to worry as much anymore about slipping and eating anyone. He still felt the urge to hunt and kill, but it was a passive, predatory sort of thing like a cat wanting to chase mice even though it was being fed high quality canned food. Only he had more self-control than a cat and wouldn't chase and bat at the tasty humans.

He watched the young people dance and flirted shamelessly with the girls, though only with the ones who understood it was just a game and nothing serious. He didn't want anything more than that, not even a one off tumble. Even though his feelings had been nicely fuzzed and their relationship had been nothing more than him mooning pathetically over her, just finding another woman attractive felt like a betrayal of Buffy.

"Hey there, hot stuff," a voice purred from behind him.

He looked over his shoulder to see a woman with long, caramel brown hair, a heart-shaped face, and dark hazel eyes. She was looking at him like he was a piece of meat she wanted to devour and she smelt of magic. This one had more than just simple, harmless flirting in mind.

"Sorry, pet, not interested."

He turned away from her only to look back again when she grabbed his shoulder. Her expression was cruel and angry.

"I don't remember asking if you were or not. I'm a powerful witch working for the city council. You don't want to make me mad, vampire."

"Yeah, I work for them, too, so not much point in bringing them into things, is there? Don't think they'd appreciate you getting all handsy with the bloke who keeps the nasties at bay. So sod off."

Not that he'd actually mention any of this to them. The only part of his life that was any of their business was when he was working. He shrugged his shoulders, knocking her hand away, and took a long drink of his beer. He'd been enjoying the night for the most part, and now he just wanted to go home.

Refusing to accept his brush off, the woman pulled a chair over and sat next to him, resting her hand suggestively on his thigh. "Oh come on, we both know you want it. That little witch you're playing house with bats for the other team, so I know she's not putting out for you. The eyes are kind of girly, especially with those lashes, but that can't be enough to get her attention."

Her hand slid up his leg, stopping just shy of his groin. It took all of his self-control to keep from exploding with rage. Instead, he gently gripped her wrist and leaned in close, his breath cool and feathery against her ear as he spoke in a seductive whisper.

"Touch me again, and I'll break every single bone in your hand, you skanky, whorish bitch."

His soft hold on her wrist tightened suddenly, taking the bones to the breaking point without actually going over it. Then he shoved her away from him and got up, the ends of his coat flaring out behind him like the swishing tail of an angry cat as he stalked away.

* * *

 **…**

* * *

Rachel Hill watched in seething fury as the council's tame vampire walked away from her. How _dare_ he! He should have been begging for the chance to be her lover, not treating her like she was some kind of diseased thing. Maybe he was getting sex from the lesbian after all. The other witch wasn't amazingly powerful, but it couldn't take that much to turn the vampire into a pretty little girl whenever she wanted. No _real_ man would have rejected her.

Before he could get out of her line of sight, Rachel murmured the words of a spell. As soon as he got close enough to that unnatural pervert, Tara Maclay, to smell her, the spell would activate, triggering an uncontrollable bloodlust. He'd slaughter her, and maybe even that brat he liked to pretend was his, even though it was impossible for vampires to have children.

* * *

 **…**

* * *

Tara was jolted from sleep by the feel of foreign magic entering the house. She quickly threw back the blanket and got up, hurrying from her room and down the stairs as fast as she could. Spike was on his knees in front of the door, bent over with his forehead against the floor and his arms wrapped around himself.

"Grab the bit and get the hell out of here!" he growled, his voice deeper and harsher than normal. Because he had rarely ever vamped out around her, it took Tara a moment to understand the reason his voice sounded different.

That moment cost her. With a savage snarl, Spike rose up into a crouch and launched himself at her. Caught off guard, Tara cast a binding spell, cursing her own stupidity as the crazed vampire crashed into her, knocking them both to the ground. His hands were bound together between them, but he was still laying on top of her with his face pressed against her neck.

She squeezed her eyes shut only to snap them open again when the expected stab of sharp fangs into her vulnerable throat was instead a gentle nip from very human teeth. Spike had apparently shifted back to human and – judging from what Tara felt pressing against her – was very, very happy with where he was at the moment.

"S-spike?" she whispered hoarsely, mouth and throat both dry from fear. She knew, in normal circumstances, that he wouldn't hurt her, but these were not normal circumstances. Dark, spiteful magic clung to him, mixing with her own. She had the strangest feeling that her simple binding spell around his wrists was the reason she hadn't been torn apart already.

He lifted his head and gazed at her with eyes that were a thin ring of blue around dilated pupils. A slow, sweet smile spread across his face. "Hi there, pet. Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" He sounded almost drugged. He giggled and whispered in a confidential tone, "I met a very bad witch today. Couldn't keep her grubby human feelers to herself. Always pawing, humans are. Can stop them _here_ though. No zappy zappy."

He wiggled against her and the spacy look in his eyes was suddenly replaced with horrified panic as he realized the reaction he was having to a warm, soft woman underneath him.

"Bloody buggering fuck!" he snarled, rolling off of her. He struggled up into a sitting position and scooted away from her until his back hit the wall. "Sorry 'bout that, love. Didn't mean to… uh…."

"It-It's okay," Tara said, cautiously sitting up and studying the spell wrapped around him. "I think the w-witch you met put a spell on you to incite bloodlust. The… um… blood part seems to be… b-blocked at the moment."

Spike looked away in obvious embarrassment and mumbled something too softly for her to hear.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't hear…. I… do you want to undo the binding spell?"

" _No!_ " he shouted, looking at her with fresh panic in his eyes. "It's the reason… that's why 'm not trying to kill you. Norm'ly it'd hafta be tight enough to hurt a bit to cause… um… _this_ reaction," he glanced down at his lap then back at her, "but if I… trust someone… Ilikebeingtiedup."

Tara frowned, trying to figure out the mumbled, slurred together words. When she did, her eyes widened a bit. "Oh! That… that's okay, Spike. There's nothing wrong with…."

He shrugged and wouldn't look at her. "'S not normal. Figured that out after I chained…."

"Buffy up," she finished for him when he trailed off.

Spike nodded. "When it's tight and hurts a little, that's just a bit of kink. Lots of folks like that. Didn't do that with the slayer. I chained her up good and proper, so she couldn't get away, but it wasn't tight on her wrists. It was s'posed to… to calm her down, so she'd just _listen_ for once instead of punching me in the face and telling me to shut up."

She slowly stood up and moved towards him. He eyed her warily. "I think I can unravel the spell, but I need to be closer." To hopefully distract him from any thoughts of all the tasty blood running through her veins, she continued talking. "That's how it is for you? If you're lightly tied up, it's calming?"

The vampire nodded again. "Yeah, though it wouldn't have worked for the slayer, no matter what. The whole trust thing is kinda important for both kinds of being tied up." His lips quirked up in a slight smile. "'S a good thing, that, or being chained up in the watcher's bathtub would've been a lot more awkward."

They were both silent for a few minutes while Tara worked on removing the spell. She agreed with the others that chaining Buffy up had been a really bad thing, but she couldn't help the touch of sympathy she felt for Spike in regards to the incident. She knew how it felt to have something about yourself ridiculed as being abnormal.

Spike's quiet words pulled her out of her thoughts. "Dru liked to tie up her things. If she tied them up, then they belonged to her, didn't they? If she tied me up, and I didn't try to get away, it meant I was _hers_. That's something her 'daddy' could never take away. She may have belonged to him, but he didn't belong to _her_. Just me. I belonged to her for over a hundred years, an' she just cut me loose."

Tara's heart broke a little at the lost and bewildered sound of his voice. Over a hundred years of taking care of and loving a madwoman, the innate codependent tendencies of a natural caretaker being reinforced and strengthened to the point where he just couldn't function without some kind of relationship, whether it be romantic or something as innocent as the protective friendship he'd developed with the waking world version of Dawn.

 _We were all worried that he wanted some kind of control over Buffy, that he'd become crazy and possessive, but all he wanted was to belong to her and to take care of her as much as she'd allow,_ she realized sadly.

"Okay, got it," she said, just as she unraveled the last of the dark magic. She wasn't as powerful as whoever had cast it, but she had more finesse with her magic.

Spike leaned back against the wall with a sigh of relief. "Thanks, love." He looked at his still magically bound wrists. "You can… uh… you know, undo this now."

Tara didn't immediately respond or release the binding spell. She sat down on the floor beside him instead. Now that the other witch's spell was gone, his aura was more relaxed than she had ever seen it. Almost peaceful.

"Do you really want me to?"

He slowly shook his head and leaned forward, pulling his knees to his chest and hooking his bound wrists around them to hold them in place. "Should though. Need to find the bitch and put her down."

"No." Tara said coldly. Spike's angry expression shifted to confusion as she slid her arm across his shoulders. "I know a good local coven. We'll take care of her. No one messes with _my_ vampire."

His eyes widened at the emphasis she put on the word, his expression clearly asking, _do I belong to you?_ His response to her nod was a soft sigh as he very slightly leaned against her. And with that tiny little movement, the master vampire put himself completely in her power.

It seemed to be a night for revelations, and the one that hit Tara right then was about herself. It had been a coincidence that she had found Spike and Dawn asleep in the waking world first, but the fact that she had been sucked into the dream was not. The spell or whatever it was had always been designed with her in mind as the third person.

She'd been powerless for most of her life, except for one thing. Her magic. It was a power she treated with respect and the utmost care. Whatever being had set this all in motion had known she would treat this new power in the same way.


	5. Chapter 5: Snapshots - Part Two

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Five: Snapshots – Part Two**

 **Warning:** Part of this got darker than I intended. I had a plan. A good one. Then I got bore- no, wait, that's not what happened. One of the characters felt I was going too easy on someone and took matters into his own hands, resulting in Spike getting a bit creepier than I had planned.

 **Author's Note:** At the beginning of each section change – as opposed to PoV change – how long they've been in the dream world will be shown. Spoilers for both the TV version of Red Dwarf and the novels.

 **…**

 _ **:Eleven-and-a-half Months:**_

When Tara got home from her classes that afternoon, Spike was on the couch with Dawn sitting in his lap watching some weird British sci-fi show involving a guy on a spaceship with a hologram and a man evolved from a cat.

"The show is fairly decent," the vampire was saying to the little girl, "but it's not as good as the love story from the novels. Lister has this special, magical thing with the girl of his dreams, and then it's gone after such a short time. He goes through so bloody much without her, but in the end, as an old man, he ends up meeting her again, as her husband, in a place where time runs backwards. And you know he'll eventually end up back on the ship with her and his mates, because of the future vision thing with knobbly bits exploding out of one of his descendants.

"In the show, the future vision is made possible because of some rubbish about getting knocked up by a female version of himself in an alternate reality where it's the men who get preggers, which is just completely daft. Not the idea in general – lots of demon races are set up that way, seahorses too… also, you know, vampire, so more or less asexual reproducer here by way of getting snacked on by a Lunchable, so can't really judge – but, really, we're meant to believe that going to a different reality just up and changes your natural biology? That's just madness."

By the time Spike's semi-rant had wound down, Tara had put all of her things away. Now she sat on the couch, putting her arm around his shoulders without even thinking about it. Since the night of Rachel Hill's spell, there had been a lot of casual physical contact between the two of them.

She smiled a little, feeling a sense of satisfaction as she thought of what she and the coven had done about the other witch. If she didn't use her power to help someone at least once a day, she would lose some of it forever. Any time she tried to cast a spell with malicious intent, it would affect her instead of the intended victim. And if she tried to get all touchy-feely with anyone else without their consent, she'd get a nasty shock for her efforts.

 _I'll have to see if I can cast a sort of reverse version of that on Spike after we all wake up,_ Tara thought. He'd muttered darkly about humans and their "filthy paws" too many times for her to believe the dream world was the only place where a human had gotten excessively gropey with the vampire. She knew he'd gotten mugged at least once. Xander had found out somehow and had spent a week constantly bringing it up and laughing about it.

"Welcome home, pet," Spike said, hitting pause on the remote. Dawn crawled from his lap to Tara's to give her a hug. "Good day at uni?"

"Not bad. I need to get to work soon on a paper for psych class."

 _Too bad I can't write up something on the care and handling of codependent vampires. Then again, this_ is _Sunnydale. Maybe the professor would believe it. And if anyone needs to come with an instruction manual, it's Spike._

Of course, the only people who would actually care enough to read such a thing were her and Dawn. Well, and maybe Anya, back in the waking world. The ex-demon was blunt and often inappropriate, but she had a good heart.

Spike hit play on the VCR remote, starting the show back up. Tara frowned slightly as she watched. Some of the language used was kind of nasty, even compared to the casual swearing Spike hadn't quite been able to eliminate from his speech around Dawn.

"Are you sure this is appropriate for Dawnie?"

"Can't keep Bit from learning godawful southern California valley speak, but I can at least make sure she's bilingual and knows _actual_ English. It's a bit coarse, yeah, but it's not like smeghead is going to end up her first word or anything," he said, sounding exasperated.

"Smeh-eh!" Dawn squealed in delight.

The moment of stunned silence was broken by Spike's irritated mutter of, "bloody hell."

"Buh-ee-ell."

Tara knew she should have been appalled, but instead she was fighting back laughter. The dismayed looking vampire actually _whimpered_ and buried his face in his hands.

"You'd think I'd learn to keep my bloody mouth shut, what with sod's law having an unnatural obsession for yours truly and all," he muttered.

Tara soothingly patted his back and glanced down at the little girl in her lap. "Your daddy is a silly vampire."

"Dada," Dawn said, copying Tara's motion and patting him on the arm. She'd uttered those particular sounds before, but never as more than just random baby babble that couldn't really be considered speech.

Spike looked up at Tara. "We can pretend _that_ was her first word, yeah?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, it was her first _American_ word, so I don't see why not," she teased gently.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:One Year and One Month:**_

 _Why do they always go for the soddin' ribs?_ Spike wondered vaguely as he coughed up blood from a punctured lung. That plus various bruises and cuts, three broken ribs, a broken arm – the right one, thankfully – and deep claw marks across his torso that had nearly disemboweled him were actually fairly light injuries considering the size of the demons he'd just taken out.

The smell of fresh human blood hit him at the same time as the pain filled whimpers. He was confused for a minute, then remembered the girl the demons had been after. Some daft little bint running about in the middle of the night in impractical and ugly footwear. One of her ridiculous six-inch heels had snapped, allowing one of the demons to get to her before he'd been able to get to it.

Now she was curled up in the alley, next to a dumpster, blood oozing from a nasty gash along the length of her upper arm. It smelt good, rich with a sort of maple syrup undertone that was the girl's personal essence. With the Tara flavor drops, he'd actually been drinking enough blood to keep himself healthy for the first time since he'd been captured and chipped, but he was injured badly enough that the instinct to bite the girl and drain her dry was nearly overwhelming.

 _Bloody well earned a bit of a snack,_ he grumbled to himself, eyeing the girl hungrily. _I'm a soddin' vampire, s'posed to be_ evil. _Can't expect me to be a bloody white hat all the time._ _'S just not natural._

"You," he said, his voice coming out as a gurgling growl. He coughed again, trying to clear the blood out of his slowly healing lung. "Tell me 'bout yourself."

"Wha?"

" _Now!_ " Stupid girl didn't realize that she was food, and he'd be on her in an instant if she tried to get up. If she was going to survive, she needed to be a person. "Talk 'bout your family."

"Um… I… I live with my parents. My dad-"

"Don't care. Your mum, she a good lady? Would she smack a bloke upside the head with an axe to protect you?" he demanded.

"Y-yes, she would."

 _Okay, I can work with this,_ Spike thought, some of the tension leaving him. The girl wasn't a person to him, but her mum… she could be like Joyce. He couldn't eat the daughter of a Joyce type. He'd wake up eventually, and then his weekly visit to her grave to talk and share a thermos of cocoa would just be awkward and weird. He ignored the fact that chatting with an imaginary version of a dead woman while pouring hot fluids on her grave probably already counted as weird, bordering on insane.

"Right then. Get on home. Your mum is likely worried."

The girl simply nodded, took off her idiotic, broken shoes and crept away from the alley.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:One Year and Two Months:**_

By the time she got home, Tara was shaking with rage. She had always been a good, diligent student, and that hadn't changed in the dream world. Her history professor didn't care about that. He just saw a shy, insecure young woman and had decided to take advantage of it.

She took a deep breath before opening the door, trying to bring herself under control. She could deal with this herself, so there was no point in upsetting Spike and Dawn. She settled a mask of serenity over herself and went inside. Which turned out to be pointless. Spike took one look at her and instantly knew something was off.

"What's wrong, pet?" he asked from where he was sitting on the floor. Dawn was toddling hesitantly from the couch to him. "That's a good girl, Nibblet," he murmured, glancing down at her and patting her on the head before looking back at Tara expectantly.

"There's nothing wrong, I'm fi-" He gave her a look, and she stopped mid-word.

 _Perceptive vampire is perceptive,_ she thought with a sigh. She sometimes wondered if he was at least a little bit empathic. The thought of an empath – even one only strong enough to have just a general feeling about people's emotional states – being turned into a vampire was a little bit horrifying. _I hope Willow never takes it into that beautiful, brilliant head of hers to try to give him his soul back. That would be an evil thing to do to someone as sensitive as most empaths are._

She sat on the couch and rubbed her face as she gathered her thoughts. "Professor Jenkins… he said… he said, even though my work has been good, h-he would flunk me if I didn't…."

"He's dead," Spike said flatly.

" _No!_ " Tara insisted. He'd been doing so well about not killing anyone. She wasn't going to let some disgusting, mockery of a teacher be the cause of a backslide. "He's not worth it. Don't kill him. Don't hurt him. I'll… I'll figure something out."

She expected an argument, but Spike just… smiled. A cold, vicious smile that sent a shiver down her spine and forcefully reminded her that she was in the presence of an apex predator.

"No worries, pet. I won't hurt him." He gathered Dawn in his arms and stood up. "Well, not much, anyway."

"Spike-"

He put a finger gently against her mouth, quieting her and putting Dawn down in her lap. "You just sit tight now, yeah? It's all gonna be alright. Be right back."

Tara was about to protest that it was still daylight, but Spike went up the stairs instead of out the door. She sighed and cuddled Dawn close.

"Tata." The little girl said happily.

Tara smiled and kissed her on the forehead. Something about just holding the warm little baby made everything feel like it would be alright. She felt a little surge of disappointment when Spike came back down after several moments and immediately took Dawn from her, holding her against his side with one arm. He used the other to haul Tara off of the couch and lead her up the stairs.

By the time they got to the bathroom, she had figured out what he had been up to, and the disappointed feeling was gone. The bathtub was full of hot water and bubbles. A glass of wine sat on the edge of the tub along with a small box of chocolates. There were a lot of things that just wouldn't work with someone who wasn't an insane vampire, but one of Spike's best techniques for dealing with women pretty much worked on any species. Dunk upset female in hot water and offer treats.

Tara smiled and hugged him. "Thanks," she whispered, giving him a platonic kiss on the cheek before turning back to the tub.

"Have yourself a good soak, love. When you're ready to come down, we'll find something stupid to watch on the telly. Take your mind off things."

"Just as long as it isn't Passions or any of those other soap operas you're addicted to," she teased.

"Oi, said stupid, didn't I?" he huffed in indignation.

Tara just grinned and shooed him out of the bathroom. Normally he would have offered to wash her hair for her, and she would have accepted once she was hidden away under the bubbles, but they both knew she needed to be alone for a little bit.

She sank into the hot water with a sigh and took a sip of wine, letting her tense muscles relax for a moment before taking stock of her emotions. She felt sick and furious. He was a _teacher_ , someone meant to nurture and guide, and he was threatening to withhold the grades she had earned unless she slept with him.

She had another sip of the wine and was hit with sudden disgust at the attitude of the Scoobies back in the waking world. Her professor, with his bright, shiny soul, had violated her trust – wanted to violate _her_ – while the soulless vampire she lived with had almost immediately figured out what she needed and was doing his best to see that she got it. A chance to work through her emotions in a safe, relaxing environment followed by a mindless distraction.

She needed to figure out what to do about Professor Jenkins before Spike took matters into his own hands. For the most part, he had put himself under her control, but when it came to her safety or Dawn's, he would ignore what she wanted in favor of what he felt was needed.

 _First thing Monday morning, I'll report him,_ she decided. She had a sinking feeling that he'd probably already been reported a time or two, but she didn't have any other options. Other than letting Spike do whatever it was he had planned.

 _No,_ she told herself resolutely. _Though he did say he wouldn't hurt him… much. If… if he just plans to scare him…. Spike can be pretty scary when he wants to be._

She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the water. Something _had_ to be done. She couldn't be the only one Professor Jenkins had tried to do this to. Maybe... _._ She took a deep breath and came to a decision. Being someone's moral compass meant more than just keeping them in the white as much as possible. Sometimes it meant helping them steer through the varying shades of gray.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

An hour later, Tara went back downstairs, dressed in a pair of flannel pajamas even though it was still afternoon. She sat down on the couch next to Spike and drew her knees up to her chest.

"You won't hurt him much?" she asked softly.

"Won't even need to go to hospital," he promised. "I'll take care of it tonight, before doing the rounds. And then I'll come back home."

"But… it's Friday," she reluctantly pointed out. She really didn't want him gone all night. She wished he didn't have to go out at all.

"Special circumstances, pet. And if you disinvite me for the night, I'll just sit on the roof above your window and bitch at you the entire time."

Her lips quirked up in a shaky smile. "A fate worse than death," she said solemnly.

"Bloody well right it is. You've not even begun to hear me bitch about what they did to the love story in Red Dwarf. And then there's your demented American spelling. I could go on about that for hours." He shook his head in disgust. "Putting zed in all kinds of words instead of a proper S and the weird aversion to the letter U. Did a giant U just up and bugger the Statue of Liberty when the rest of the world wasn't looking?"

"Maybe all of our extra Us ran off and eloped with your ability to say the er sound?" she shot back, the light bantering helping her to feel better.

He laughed at that, then suddenly became serious again. "Do you need me in your room tonight, love?"

"Yes," she answered simply.

Usually, Spike only slept in her room with her on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday, but after the disgusting way Professor Jenkins had leered at her during his proposition, she could definitely use a night of innocent cuddling. Sometimes Spike's body reacted to being in a bed with a woman, but they both ignored it when it happened. Even if she hadn't had Willow back in the waking world, he was the wrong gender, and she wasn't Buffy.

For the rest of the daylight hours, they sat together, Tara curled against his side as they watched bad movies and shared a pint of ice cream. Once the sun went down, Spike slipped out to take care of things.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Paul Jenkins was a large man. He stood at seven inches over six feet and was broad and muscular. He was used to easily intimidating others, and so wasn't the least bit afraid when a slender, white-haired man under six feet tall and dressed all in black suddenly appeared in front of him as he walked home from the college.

He did feel just a little bit of unease when the man smiled at him. It was an unsettling smile that, for a brief instant, filled him with the foreign feeling of being prey. Then the man spoke, and the unease drained away.

"Evening, mate, out for a bit of a stroll?"

Paul snorted in contempt. Just some little pretty boy Brit trying to be a badass. What was he going to do, make him drink tea until he exploded?

"Out of the way, pipsqueak."

He reached out to shove him aside, but his wrist was caught in a sudden vicelike grip. The creepy smile was back, and fear started to slowly bloom in Paul's heart.

"We need to have a bit of a chat about Tara Maclay. But first, a change of venue."

The man's fist came up at lightning speed and slammed into Paul's head, sending him down into darkness.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

The burning agony of his shoulders and wrists made itself known even before awareness could fully return. It pushed and prodded him from the comfort of the darkness, forcing him first to that vague awareness and then to full consciousness. A low moan of pain escaped him as his eyes flickered open.

The soft light from several candles illuminated what seemed to be a crypt. He was chained to a wall, his weight dragging at his shoulders and bound wrists. Just as he managed to struggle to his feet, the platinum blond suddenly appeared in his line of sight, tapping a metal spike against his palm.

"Well, well, sleeping ugly hath awakened," he said cheerfully, flashing a disturbingly manic grin. "Sorry 'bout the sparse décor, mate. Only really use this version for weapon storage, so none of the cozy, homey touches like in the real world."

 _Oh, god, I've been kidnapped by a lunatic,_ Paul thought in growing horror. He'd always been large, even as a child, so the sudden feeling of helplessness was as foreign as it was unwelcome. He'd heard somewhere that crazy people sometimes had more strength than normal, but that didn't really seem to explain how someone that much smaller than him had knocked him out, dragged him away somewhere, and chained him upright against a wall.

 _Maybe PCP?_ he wondered, feeling sick. That would make someone stronger than they should be and harder to hurt. There were supposed to be a lot of PCP gangs roaming Sunnydale.

"I considered using a knife, you know," the man said. His tone was light and conversational, as if he was discussing the weather. "Cut you up a bit, show you some of your own innards. But, well," he shrugged and tossed the spike into the air, easily catching it as it came back down, "I went all over nostalgic and hunted up a nice railroad spike. Used to torture humans with them."

He began pacing as he spoke, a slight bounce in his step, as if he just couldn't keep still. "Not often, mind you. Nothing noble or anything, just never much had the patience for torture. Usually, if I came across your sort trying to bully, or worse, some poor girl, I'd step in. Appealed to the romantic in me. Course, half the time, I ate the victim before having a spot of fun with her tormentor, but well, vampire here." He shrugged again, his expression clearly saying, _what can you expect?_

Paul's fear morphed to full blown terror. He was chained up at the mercy of a crazy person on PCP who was casually talking about torture and claiming to be a vampire. His eyes were glued to the metal spike as the man spun it up into the air and caught it again. Then the blond was suddenly right in front of him, up on the balls of his feet and holding the point of the spike an inch from Paul's right eye.

"But we aren't here to talk 'bout what I used to do back in the day," he said softly. "We're here to talk about you and what you tried to do to Tara Maclay."

He was confused for a moment, and then remembered the timid, mousy girl in one of his classes. She was the type who usually would just give in and not report things. And if she got the courage to do it… well, he just played the "gentle giant" card, claiming that some girl had decided she'd claim he'd done something, thinking she'd be believed because of his size. He'd done it before and gotten away with it.

"I… I didn't-"

He was cut off by his own scream as the spike suddenly moved, the tip pressing into the side of his head with a steady, horrible pressure. The man leaned in and sniffed at his neck.

"I can smell it when you lie," he said softly. "And when you're afraid."

He fisted his free hand in Paul's hair and dragged his head down, the spike scraping harshly against his skin at the movement. A disturbingly cool tongue flicked out to lap at his blood. The college professor had to fight not to wet himself. _Vampires are not real,_ he told himself desperately.

He cried out again in pain as the spike was pressed harder into the side of his head, this time with a slow, twisting motion.

"If I do this juuussst right," it was a strangely intimate whisper right into his ear, "I can shove this into your brain without killing you. You'll be a drooling idiot in nappies for the rest of your miserable life, but you wouldn't be dead."

Suddenly, the terrible pressure was gone and the grip on his hair was released as the man let him go and backed away a little. Paul shakily straightened up, struggling not to hyperventilate. It didn't matter if he didn't believe in vampires. There was something very, very wrong with his captor, and he was going to die here, chained to a wall and murdered by a psychotic pipsqueak he should have been able to crush with ease. All because of a girl who should have been flattered that he'd even noticed her.

"Unfortunately, a change in professors would be disruptive to Tara's studies. Can't have that. So you need to be alive and in possession of what few wits you have."

Paul whimpered as the man was suddenly right back in his personal space, the tip of the railroad spike resting just under his eye.

"Don't need two eyes to teach or grade papers, do you? Or…." The spike moved away from his face to rest against his shoulder. "I know a good one, though I'd have to modify it for you. Wouldn't survive the way Angelus did it."

From the moment he'd come to, Paul had thought the little blond was crazy. He was wrong he now knew as he watched the sanity slowly leak from those cold blue eyes.

"You see," he continued, his voice strangely light and breathy, "I'd have to tear you open and yank out a couple of ribs. Then pin you naked to the wall by shoving those ribs into your shoulders…. Wasn't s'posed to comfort Dru. She'd been bad, you see? Talking to the stars when _he_ wanted silence. He hit her. Had to comfort her though, didn't I? Got punished. Pinned to the wall for a week."

The man smiled at him, a horrible, terrifying smile that was somehow strangely gentle. It shouldn't have been possible, but it became even more frightening as sanity crept back into his eyes.

"I could do that. Pin you to the wall for a week using a couple of spikes. Feed you rats."

"Please," Paul begged, "please let me go. I'll give her all As, just-"

" _No_!" he said, quietly but forcefully. "You're not to speak out of turn, and you're not to _give_ her grades. You mark her papers fairly."

He took a step back, trailing the spike down Paul's body until it rested against his groin. "Don't need this to teach or grade with. In fact, seems like it would help if you didn't have it."

He drew his hand back, then slammed it forward, burying the spike into the wall. Paul screamed and wet himself before realizing that he was still intact. It had gone into the wall just under him, doing no more than tearing his jeans.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Would you look at that? Even smaller than I thought. Well, I know better now, don't I? I hear one word about you trying to get sex from your students again, and next time, I won't miss."

He unlocked the chains and left without a second glance, leaving Paul to carefully move forward away from the railroad spike before falling to the ground in a terrified, sobbing heap.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

It was a little after two in the morning when the soft sounds of someone coming into her room pulled Tara from a troubled sleep. There was a faint rustling of cloth as Spike changed into a pair of sweatpants, and then he curled up in the bed with her. She turned towards him, tucking her knees up behind his and molding her torso along the curve of his back.

The vampire was practically vibrating with tension. Tara slipped her arm around him and murmured the words of a variation of her binding spell that would keep his wrists bound together until he wanted them not to be. He relaxed almost immediately.

Sometimes – and he always just sort of _knew_ when those times were – she needed to be held, and they'd fall asleep together with her cuddled in his arms. Usually, though, this was how it was, with both of them getting what they needed from her holding him. It made her feel strong, in control, and confident.

Those were feelings that most of her relatives had tried to stomp out, leaving nothing but tiny, shriveled seeds in their wake. Being with Willow had started to fix some of the damage, but the redhead was very definitely the dominant one in the relationship. This, though, the friendship she'd developed over the course of a year with Spike, had nurtured those seeds of confidence and strength until they'd begun to blossom. The incident with Professor Jenkins had made the petals wilt.

Tara buried her face against the back of Spike's neck, breathing in the comforting scent of her vampire. She had power here. Not because she'd bullied or forced anything, but because she had been trusted with it. She sighed and drifted off into a peaceful sleep, letting the quiet feeling of strength regain its own.


	6. Chapter 6: Snapshots - Part Three

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Six: Snapshots – Part Three**

 **Author's Note:** At the beginning of each section change – as opposed to PoV change – how long they've been in the dream world will be shown. When listing years, I won't be showing months unless there's more than one scene in a given year. The nickname Tara ends up using for Spike is from the comic Spike: Old Wounds.

 **…**

 _ **:Three Years:**_

Spike paced back and forth across the living room, the motion soothing to both him and the little girl held against his chest. He rubbed her back, able to feel the heat of her fever through her shirt. She needed medicine. What the bloody hell was taking Tara so long?

 _She hasn't been gone that long,_ he reminded himself. It seemed like forever, but it had only really been ten minutes. Medicine and doctors had come a long way in over a century. Dawn would be fine. She wasn't going to develop pneumonia from this. And even if she did, she wouldn't die.

He wouldn't have to watch the life drain away from her like it had from the little sister who had been the same age as Nibblet was now when she died.

Dawn whimpered, and Spike's mind immediately jerked back to the present. "Sorry, Bit," he whispered, relaxing his too-tight grip on her.

"I'm thirsty," she said, her voice a painful sounding croak from the sore throat that had come along with the cough, fever, and sneezing she'd woken up with.

"Right then," he said, taking a deep, calming breath, "let's get you a drink, yeah?"

He shifted her to his right side, freeing his left hand to work on filling a sippy cup with apple juice. She'd just gotten the hang of normal cups, but she was sick enough that Spike figured it would be a bit beyond her today. He'd even given her the daily dose of blood in one of the brightly colored kiddy cups.

He carried her back to the living room and sat on the couch, turning her so she was sitting on his lap with her back to him to make it easier for her to drink. She guzzled it down like she was dying of thirst, then started crying when it was gone.

"Shh, shh, it's okay, Li'l Bit, I'll get you some more," Spike murmured, petting her soft curls. _Really hope Tara can find some kind of sore throat spray for sprogs._

Before he could get up to get her more juice, Dawn nuzzled the inside of his elbow and sank suddenly sprouted fangs into the vein there. He stared down at her, blinking stupidly a couple of times, as a feeling weirdly reminiscent of the time he'd eaten a flower person at Woodstock buzzed through him.

After a couple of minutes, she looked up at him, looking completely human except for the fangs and yellow eyes. He'd sort of vaguely been aware that she could do that, but he'd always just used a knife to get the blood she needed.

"Not thirsty anymore," she announced happily, the fangs retracting and her eyes switching back to blue.

 _That's not the only thing you aren't anymore, Bit,_ he thought. He couldn't feel the excess heat radiating from her anymore. A hand to her forehead confirmed it. Her fever had broken.

The fact that he had spent half the night fighting demons, spent all of the morning worrying, and it was the middle of his normal sleep cycle all suddenly combined with the relief that Dawn seemed to be better and the wooziness of blood loss. The room spun for a moment, and then he slumped over across the couch.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

When Tara got home from the store, Dawn was sitting in the middle of the living room playing with some of her dolls. Spike was curled up on the couch under what she was pretty sure was Dawn's favorite blanket, unless he had an identical one and a Pretty Pink Pony Princess fetish she didn't know about.

"Hi, Tara!" the little girl called out happily. "I gotsted thirsty, and then bit Daddy and wasn't thirsty anymore, and then he had to have a naptime."

"So I see," Tara said, glancing from the girl to the vampire and back again speculatively. Apparently the medicine she'd bought wouldn't be needed. The popsicles definitely would be, though. Spike looked like he'd had a rough day and could use a nice sugar infusion when he woke up.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:Five Years:**_

When Dawn had declared she wanted to have a tea party, Tara had envisioned something cutesy with a plastic tea set and maybe some sandwiches, cookies, and one of her herbal teas. When the little girl had insisted that all invited guests had to wear dresses, the witch had expected those guests would end up just being herself and Dawn's dolls.

 _I really should have known better,_ she thought wryly.

"No slouching at the table," the vampire sitting beside her – looking disturbingly comfortable in a simple, black and red lacy dress – whispered, poking her lightly in the side. "Isn't proper."

"Oh, sorry," Tara whispered back, straightening her posture.

"Not that much of this _is_ proper, mind you," Spike continued quietly, "but it can't be helped. Bit is only five, after all, and insists on being the hostess. Can't expect a five-year-old to handle boiling water and the like."

Instead of a little girl's plastic toy tea set, Dawn was gleefully presiding over what a Victorian-era raised Englishman had grudgingly declared a vaguely adequate real tea set. There was a silver tray with a porcelain teapot, a pitcher of cream, a bowl of sugar, cups and saucers, and a glass dish of lemon slices. Plates and a three-tiered serving tray sat on the table next to it, little fruit tarts on the top, tea sandwiches in the middle, and chocolate cake on the bottom.

Tara had offered to make the tea, but Spike had made it himself after giving her the kind of look usually reserved for a small child who insisted she could make a three-tiered Italian cream cake in the family oven now that she'd mastered the Easy Bake. Her participation as more than a guest had consisted of putting spells on the tea pot to make it light enough for Dawn to handle and to keep the contents at the right temperature.

 _I can't really blame him,_ she thought, _the last time he saw me make tea, I committed the apparently horrible sin of dunking a teabag into hot water._ The absolutely appalled expression on his face had actually been pretty funny.

Dawn poured out five cups of tea – two of them for her dolls, Sally and Rebeca – one at a time, and Spike made sure they got where they were supposed to be, declaring that even though he was stuck in a dress again, it didn't mean he'd shirk proper gentlemanly manners.

"Again?" Tara repeated, quirking a brow. She'd thought he looked a bit too comfortable in the dress.

Spike shrugged. "Dru sometimes decided on the same dress code as the bit when she wanted to play dollies and tea party." He both looked and sounded a little wistful at the reminder of his ex. "Knowing me, do you honestly think I ever said no when she asked me to participate?"

 _I honestly don't think you're capable of saying no to someone you care about, as long as it isn't about their safety,_ Tara thought sadly as she took a sip of tea. Dawn was getting to the point where she was starting to realize that and was using it to her advantage. She'd have to talk to her about it soon. She sighed and took another sip of tea, only to be poked in the ribs again.

"You're supposed to put the cup down between sips," Spike whispered. Then he murmured something that sounded suspiciously like "ignorant savage."

Dawn giggled and grinned at them. "I think Tara needed the proper manners lecture, too, Daddy." Spike just glanced at her with a raised brow, and the little girl immediately looked contrite. "I'm sorry, Miss Tara, I was very rude to publicly criticize you. Please forgive me?"

"Of course," Tara said with a soft smile.

Her smile turned impish as she set her teacup down only to immediately lift it again to take another drink. Spike grinned at her, then started chatting with "Miss Sally" and "Miss Rebeca," the dolls being voiced by Dawn.

Tara shook her head and threw herself into enjoying the time spent with her weird, wonderful little family.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:Six Years:**_

Dawn sighed and very carefully lifted a corner of the curtain to look outside. She was so bored. Tara was out doing the grocery shopping and her daddy had fallen asleep on the couch. Again. She sometimes wondered why he had even bothered turning the basement into a room. If he wasn't sleeping in Tara's room, he usually just ended up catnapping his way through the daylight hours on the couch.

She peered outside, her eyes widening in excitement when she saw the dog out on the lawn. She glanced at her dad, then back at the dog. She wasn't supposed to go outside during the day if Tara wasn't home, but she really wanted to pet the dog.

 _Daddy's sleeping pretty deep,_ she thought, looking at him again. He'd gotten really banged up by whatever he'd fought last night. He probably wouldn't even notice if she just popped out really quick.

Her decision made, she crept silently towards the front door and slipped outside, feeling a combination of fear and exhilaration at doing the forbidden. She slowly approached the dog, frowning when she realized it was trembling and whimpering.

"Doggie?"

She saw it then. A white, clawed hand with only three fingers and a thumb clutched around the dog's leg. It was coming out of the ground. Before she could run back to the house, another hand burst up through the ground and reached for her.

She screamed, the door banging open before the sound stopped coming. A horrible white head rose from the soil only to be instantly crunched by a heavy black boot while a just starting to smolder arm wrapped around her and yanked her away. She started screaming again when the parts of her rescuer not covered by a hastily grabbed blanket burst into flames.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

Tara knew something bad had happened the instant she opened the door and caught a whiff of something like charred bacon. She stepped into the house, a bag of groceries in her arms, and her eyes widened in shock at the sight in the living room. Spike was sitting on the edge of the couch, looking singed and a little dazed. Both of his hands and his left forearm where swathed heavily in bandages. Dawn, her cheeks streaked with tears, was standing in front of him and holding a mug with a straw sticking out of it.

"Wha-what happened?"

Spike let go of the straw in his mouth and stared calmly at a freshly crying Dawn for a few seconds before answering Tara's question. "Somethin' that won't be happening again, right, Nibblet?"

"N-no. I w-won't… won't go outside during the day if Tara isn't home," Dawn wailed. "I'm sorry."

"'S alright, Bit. No permanent harm done. The nasty is gone, and, well," he smiled wryly, "considering all the times my own reckless idiocy has gotten me set on fire, can't rightly be mad at you for following in my footsteps, can I now?"

Dawn just sobbed harder. Spike managed to awkwardly pull her into his lap with his bandaged hands.

"There, there. 'S all right as rain. Won't even get in trouble for this mess, since you've learnt your lesson."

He glanced at Tara for confirmation. While anything involving Dawn was ultimately Spike's decision, he knew as well as she did that he was terrible at coming up with or enforcing appropriate punishments. All she had to do was look at him with her big blue eyes and "no TV for a week" suddenly became "you've gone two whole hours without the telly? Let's see what's on."

In this particular case, however, Tara agreed that no punishment was needed. _Helping someone you love take care of severe burns because you made a mistake kind of makes a spanking and a time out seem like nothing,_ she thought, looking at Dawn in sympathy.

"You broke a very important rule, Dawnie," she said gently, "but punishing you for it would just be about punishment, not about learning from your mistake." She took a deep breath before continuing. "Now, why don't you pick out a movie while I put the groceries away? We'll all watch it together."

Twenty minutes later, they were ten minutes into _The Princess Bride_ , and both Spike and Dawn were fast asleep, the little girl clinging to her father as if he might vanish in a puff of smoke. _He almost did,_ Tara thought soberly. She was pretty sure the bandages on his arm and hands covered badly charred flesh. That would have been horrifying for poor little Dawnie, and was probably the main reason for the bandages, since vampires didn't get infections.

 _I'll need to make sure he drinks a lot more blood when he wakes up._ She focused on the ways to get him better in an attempt to stop thinking about how close she and Dawn must have been to losing him. She wondered suddenly what would happen if any of them died in the dream world.

 _I'll do whatever I can to make sure we never have to find out,_ she thought resolutely. She'd protect her family. _Here and in the waking world, too. No matter what any of the others think. Even Willow._

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:Eight Years:**_

 _I think I'm the only kid in all of Sunnydale who loves November fifth more than October thirty-first,_ Dawn thought as she danced gleefully around the bonfire. It and the wild dancing had been hidden from the neighbors by an illusion that also kept them from hearing the loud rock music, her dad's strangely melodic yell-singing, and her own excited shrieks.

She knew that hiding a party from the neighbors wasn't usually the sort of thing that Tara used her magic for, but once again the traditional argument had ended the traditional way. Dad had claimed the entire thing was about her getting some exposure to her heritage. Tara had responded by claiming it was mostly about wanting to have a wild party with a bonfire and fireworks. That had earned her the Wounded Puppy Dog Look of Innocence, and the witch had caved with mock exasperation.

Two years ago, she'd been given the lecture on the religious and political history of the night, but Dawn agreed with Tara's take on things. Her dad just wanted an excuse to have a bonfire, set off fireworks, and burn things in effigy. Of course, that knowledge didn't stop her or Tara from participating. In fact, the only reason the woman wasn't right there with them was because she was taking a quick rest in one of the lawn chairs.

Dawn squealed suddenly and laughed as she was grabbed under the armpits and lifted into the air. Her dad whirled around with her a bit in time with the music, then pulled her close so her back was against his chest. He gave her a kiss on the cheek before carefully throwing her onto the pillows and blankets piled high beside Tara's lawn chair. A few seconds later he bounced down next to her and play growled before grabbing her again and tickling her.

"Did you two get into the Halloween candy again when I wasn't looking?" Tara asked, the amused sparkle in her eyes evident even with just the light from the bonfire.

"Hey, I just had a peanut butter cup," Dawn said in her own defense as she wiggled free. " _He_ ate an entire package of pixie sticks."

"Dirty little snitch," he muttered, sticking his tongue out at her. "Just for that, you don't get to throw the wanker in the fire this year."

"Aww." She pouted after a quick glance at Tara to make sure it was okay. The last time she'd tried to wiggle out of a punishment, she and Tara had had a talk about the fact that she had Dad wrapped around her little finger and how it wasn't fair of her to use that against him.

Tara's amused smile reassured her that it was just play, so she turned up the pout and added the Big Blue Puppy Dog Eyes of Doom. She was rewarded with an overly dramatic sigh before he reached into one of his coat pockets and handed her the doll with a flourish. She wasn't sure who it was supposed to be, but it was the same every year: a man with a large forehead and brown hair that stuck straight up.

Dawn jumped up to her feet and danced over to the bonfire, holding onto the doll and bouncing impatiently on the balls of her feet while she waited for the adults to join her. Finally, after taking a gazibillion years or so, they were there with her, and Tara was chanting the words that would start up the magical fireworks.

As soon as it began, Dawn shrieked gleefully and threw the doll into the fire. _I have such a cool family,_ she thought happily as the three of them partied into the night.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:Ten Years:**_

"I swear, Spooky, one of these days I'm going to put you on vampire Ritalin," Tara grumbled good naturedly. The nickname had stuck after an incident involving a bag of flour and teaching Dawn to bake a cake.

Spike laughed and grinned at her. "Nah. You don't want me as one of those good little drugged up automatons. You'd miss my exuberant personality," he said airily, waving his hand about randomly.

They were walking together along the night streets of Sunnydale. Or rather, she was walking, and he was bouncing along as if he was thinking of trying out for the role of Tigger in a live action version of Winnie-the-Pooh. With Dawn staying the night at a friend's for a slumber party, they had thought dinner and movie out would be fun. _I had a great time,_ Tara thought, eyeing her companion in a mixture of amusement and nervousness, _but I think next time I'll pick the movie._

"My god, did you _see_ how he killed that girl who was clearly a winter but dressed and painted her face like she thought she was an autumn? Bugger Angelus and his mind games as art, _that_ was true artistry. And what he did with the head… that was bloody genius."

He was practically skipping and kept waving his hands as he talked, as if hand gestures were absolutely essential to making his point. And that point seemed to be spazzing like a demented fangirl over the movie they'd just seen.

"You know, I'm not sure if watching slasher movies is really a good idea for a recovering homicidal maniac." She smiled to take any sting out of the words.

"Recovering homicidal maniac?" he repeated with a bark of laughter. "I don't think they have a twelve-step program for that, love."

Tara grinned, remembering her own thoughts along those lines around the time they'd first come to the dream world. Despite the fact that he was essentially a serial killer and his "exuberance" was making her a little nervous, she felt safe around him. Even though the stuff he lived on was pretty much all Tara flavored, he'd never made her feel like food. Sometimes like a prey animal, but never like actual food.

 _I wonder if that's how the prey animals in Dawn's scrapbook feel about their predator buddies,_ she thought, remembering the book hidden under Dawn's bed in the waking world.

"You've got to at least admit that that Carl wanker completely had it coming, though. He was cheating on his girl. Having his dick cut off and-"

Tara shuddered and cut him off. "That scene was disturbing enough to see, I don't need to hear about it after the fact." Even more disturbing had been Spike actually cheering when it happened. "I'm pretty sure no one has _that_ coming."

"Cheating is evil," he said primly, starting to come down from his slasher movie high. "Sort of my thing, yeah, but I'm all about sinning against God and man. Cheating is a sin against _love_ , pet, and that's just not right."

"But you wouldn't wish anything that horrible on Drusilla," she said gently. She knew she was poking at old wounds, but those were the ones that tended to fester if left alone.

"Dru's barmy. Can't hold anything she does against her," he said defensively. Then he continued in a quiet voice as he stared down at the ground, "'Sides, some people just aren't worth enough to be faithful to."

Before Tara could respond to that, three creatures that looked like the love children of a yak and a tree burst out of an alleyway they couldn't have possibly fit through. Spike launched himself at them with a savage snarl.

She watched, stunned and dismayed, as her friend recklessly fought the demons. They were each easily three times his size, but he persisted. Tara was mesmerized by the savagely fluid motions of the battle as he somehow managed to take them all out.

"Tara!"

Spike's shout pulled her from her near trance. She turned and stumbled back, unconsciously reaching out for Willow as she tried to summon enough magic to stop the demon that had snuck up behind her. But there was no Willow here, no one to take her hand and share energy. Then, suddenly, there _was_ a hand in hers.

"Take what you need, love."

She didn't stop to think about the fact that the energy of a vampire should have been incompatible with her magic. She just reached in and found the pinkish gold at the core of Spike's being – the colors of love and strength intermingled as one – using it to fuel her spell. It wasn't as strong as what she could do with Willow, but it was strong enough. The demon hit a barrier and bounced back from it.

The barrier was destroyed, but it had done its job. Spike now had time to get to the demon before it could hurt Tara.

"Good spot of violence, that was," Spike said happily once the last demon was dead. Blood covered half his face from a couple of nasty head wounds and he was very obviously limping. He winced and muttered, "Always the sodding ribs."

"You are crazy," Tara accused. He should have been dead. The demons hadn't had any wood on them or anything, but they'd come close to pulling off his head several times.

The vampire grinned manically at her as he pulled out and lit a cigarette. "Let you in on a bit of a secret, pet," he said before taking a long drag. "Dru's completely insane, no question, but if you asked any of the minions, they'd tell you that the bug-shaggingly crazy one of the two of us has always been me."

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:Almost Fourteen Years:**_

It was the day before Dawn's fourteenth birthday, and, as it had approached, both Spike and Tara had had a feeling it would be their last in the dream world. That feeling had solidified into knowledge when Dawn woke up with her memories from the waking world as well as the ones she'd made with them.

They tried to make it special, watching all of their favorite movies – with the exception of slasher flicks – together during the daylight hours. Once the sun set, they went out, having fun and saying goodbye to the dream version of Sunnydale.

"I know we have to wake up, but I'm going to miss this place," Dawn said wistfully as they headed home from the ice cream place. Even though she just a day away from being fourteen and had memories of being a bit older, she walked between Tara and Spike, holding their hands.

"You guys did a really good job of taking care of me." She shot a mock glare at Spike. "Even if you wouldn't eat Joey Sanford for putting a slug in my hair last year. I totally wouldn't have minded or thought badly of you for it."

Spike just grinned at her. "A matter of pride as much as anything else at that point, Bit. Said I wouldn't kill any humans, and I bloody well stuck to it, didn't I?"

They continued on in silence for a few moments before Dawn spoke again. "When… when we get back… it's all going to be real again, isn't it? I _know_ all the stuff from there, but it's like there's this film between it and me. But when we go back… Mom and Buffy…. It's all going to be fresh and horrible, isn't it?"

"Yes," Tara said simply, gently squeezing her hand. "But we'll be there for you. No matter what, we're family. In this world and the waking one. Right?"

She glanced towards Spike with her last word. He had seemed cheerful for the most part, but Tara knew better. There was a sort of skittishness to him that he was trying to hide, and his aura was swirling with stress and deepening depression.

"You'll be fine, Nibblet," he said, not looking at either of them. "Everyone'll be there for you."

"Spooky," Tara started, troubled by the fact that he hadn't said anything about _him_ actually being there for Dawn. _What are you planning?_

Spike flashed his most charming smile and let go of Dawn's hand in order to get in front of them. "Come on, ladies, no point in moping about. Let's have a spot of fun, shall we?"

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

One moment she was snuggled up against him on the park bench and the next her eyes had drifted closed, and she was gone. Vanished as if she had never really existed. _Hope that just means she woke up once she fell asleep here,_ he thought, silently standing up.

Tara hadn't noticed yet. She was still standing and pointing out the constellations as he snuck up behind her. He slipped his arm around her neck and very carefully applied pressure. Right before she lost consciousness from the sleeper hold, he whispered softly in her ear.

 **…**

* * *

 **…**

 _ **:The Waking World:**_

When Tara came to, Dawn was already awake and wiggling out from underneath her and Spike. She was confused and disoriented for a moment, but then her memories sorted themselves out. She remembered coming home and finding Spike and Dawn unconscious on the floor as if it had happened less than an hour ago. Which it had.

The memories from the dream world were still there, but one step removed so they didn't detract from the immediacy of the waking world memories. The feelings she'd developed were still there as well, and just as strong as they had been. Dawn was like a daughter to her, and Spike was her closest friend. They were her family.

She slowly got up and helped Dawn to her feet, her thoughts focused on those last few moments within the dream. _Oh no, oh god, Spooky, what did you do?_ She had known something wasn't right. She'd been planning to use a sleeping spell on Spike before he could do anything stupid, but he'd gotten the drop on her there. His whispered words to her as she'd lost consciousness echoed through her mind. _Tell Dawn I'm sorry._

A choked off sob from Dawn broke into her thoughts, and she immediately pulled the teenager into a hug. They stood there for several minutes, Tara gently stroking her tangle of curly brown hair.

"S-sorry," Dawn said, pulling away a little and wiping at the tears on her cheeks. "It all just kind of hit me at once." Her eyes went wide. "Oh man, poor Spike, it's all going to hit him like a ton of bricks when he wakes up."

She frowned and looked down at the still unconscious vampire. "Shouldn't… shouldn't he be awake by now?"

Tara watched, feeling a little numb as Dawn dropped down beside him and started shaking his shoulder. She didn't stop her, even though she knew it wouldn't help. _I don't think he_ is _going to wake up, Dawnie._ She couldn't bring herself to say the words. All she could do was stare and wonder what would happen. Would he turn to dust here in the waking world if he did what she thought he planned? Or would he just sort of exist as an empty shell?

"Spike? Hey, hurry up and go to sleep already so you can wake up. You are like, the king of cat naps, so wake up already!" Dawn shook him again, more frantically this time. "Spike… Dad… Daddy?" She looked up at Tara, tears streaking her face. "Tara, why won't he wake up?"


	7. Chapter 7: Finding Home

**The Reforging of the Key**

 **Chapter Seven: Finding Home**

 **…**

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!" Dawn shook Spike's limp, lifeless body with each repetition of the phrase. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Dawnie…." Tara fell to her knees next to the distraught girl and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She opened her mouth to give her Spike's message… and couldn't. She couldn't make herself say the words.

 _Damn it, Spooky, I'm not giving up on you. I_ know _you. You always put the needs of those you care about above what you think you want._

Though, honestly, she didn't think she'd be able to blame him if he didn't come back to them. In the dream world, he'd been respected and loved and free of the chip. Here, he was constantly belittled and mocked, mostly unwanted and unloved, and he was vulnerable to his natural prey. She was pretty sure that the mugging Xander was always laughing about hadn't been the worst thing to happen to Spike at the hands of a human since he'd been chipped.

Beside her, Dawn sobbed and collapsed bonelessly across her father's body. "Stupid, selfish vampire. I know it hurts here, but you have to come back. Please don't leave me."

Tara looked away, tears starting to form in her own eyes. That's when she saw it. The faintest twitch of Spike's hand.

"Dawn," she called out urgently, gripping the girl's shoulders and pulling her up onto her knees.

"No! I'm not giving up!"

"No, no, Dawnie, _look_!" She pointed, drawing Dawn's attention to Spike's face as his eyes flickered open.

 **…**

* * *

 **...**

In the dream world, Spike sat alone on the park bench, watching the eastern sky. There was still time. Not to get to the house – and why would he ever want to go back there now that it was empty? – but to close his eyes and let himself drift off. He'd wake up back in the real world with his girls. God, he missed them.

 _But if I do that, eventually whatever it is that's wrong with me will rear its ugly head, and I'll be alone again. Unloved and unwanted._

Sometimes he wondered if he'd been cursed. If some demon in human guise had come across his poetry when he'd still been alive and had been deeply offended by its utter terribleness. But no, there was just something _wrong_ about him. There always had been. That was why…. He instinctively shied away from the thought.

 _Bugger it, about to go all over crispy critter, might as well do a bit of poking into things._ He remembered his mother after he'd turned her, the vile things spewing from her mouth as she talked about wishing he'd find a girl so she wouldn't have to put up with him anymore. Remembered her…. He shuddered in revulsion and quickly shoved those memories back down in the depths of his psyche where they belonged. Not even imminent death could make them bearable.

He shivered and hugged himself, his fingers caressing the sleeves of the leather coat he still privately thought of as Nikki's. He was proud of the skill it had taken to dance with Nikki, proud that he'd been both her best and last partner, but the coat was more than just a trophy to him. It symbolized her essence. Her strength.

She'd begged for her life even though she was beyond ready for it to be over. Not for her own sake, but for her son. If she'd been anyone else, he might possibly have let her live. But he'd loved her, in his own way, and so he'd ignored her words and had given her what she needed. Death at the hands of a worthy foe rather than due to a careless mistake against a fledge, which would have left her son convinced she hadn't cared enough about him to live.

And, oh god, the look of _peace_ on her face as she died. The same look he'd seen in the eyes of countless girls he'd spent weeks draining to the brink over and over again, teasing them with death until they craved it, literally _cried_ for it, because then he could see it when they died…. The peace that part of him had longed for ever since Angelus had shattered his illusions of ever having any real control over his own life or destiny.

But Dru had needed him, so even as he'd thrown himself recklessly into dangerous situations, he'd always held back his own death wish to be there for the one he loved. And now he'd do it again. Eventually, Dawn and Tara would realize he was an unlovable monster, and maybe then he'd finally have that playdate with Mr. Sunshine, but right now, they needed him.

Spike sighed, curled up in Nikki's coat as if wrapping himself up in her strength, and closed his eyes just as the sun began to rise.

 **…**

* * *

 **...**

Dawn gave Spike a minute to sit up before she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. _I forgot how thin and bony he is here,_ she thought. Now that she wasn't freaking out about him not waking up, the differences were jarring. In the dream world, he'd been healthy and happy. Here, he was way too thin, looked exhausted, and his eyes had a dull, listless look to them.

"What took you so long? You worry me like that again, and I'll… I'll set you on fire, you stupid vampire!" She figured her threat would probably have been more effective if she wasn't hugging him for all she was worth, but she couldn't bring herself to let go.

"Sorry, Bit," he whispered hoarsely, lifting his own arms to circle around her. "Just… got a bit lost on the way, is all."

He shuddered suddenly, and Dawn knew his memories of the waking world had just reasserted themselves as the dominant ones. There was a small, sympathetic sound from Tara, and suddenly she was there as part of the hug.

"I love you, Dad," she whispered. "I don't care what the others think or say, I'll _always_ love you."

He didn't say anything in response, just shifted so that he had one arm still around her and the other around Tara. _We're his girls, and he's our vampire,_ she thought, feeling like everything was going to be okay now. They were family, and they'd get through all of this together.

That, of course, was when Willow came home. And, unfortunately, she wasn't alone.

"Hi, Spike! You're looking very attractive today," the Buffybot announced perkily.

With what sounded suspiciously like a choked off whimper, Spike scrambled away from them and bolted for the kitchen. Before Dawn could react, he had fled through the back door into the night.

"Geez, I know he doesn't like the bot anymore, but drama queen much?"

Dawn and Tara shared a look, fourteen years of living together giving them enough knowledge of each other to silently communicate. Tara took off after Spike while Dawn turned her wrath on the redheaded witch.

"You get that thing out of my house!" she screamed, her voice rapidly rising to the levels of a patented Dawn Summers Power Shriek. She really wanted to go with Tara, but she was pretty sure Spike needed to just completely fall apart right now, and wouldn't be able to do that with her there. "Get it out! Get it out!"

"D-Dawnie, what?" She looked from the screaming teenager to her girlfriend as the other woman headed out of the house. "Tara, baby? What's going on?"

 **…**

* * *

 **...**

By the time she caught up to him, Spike was in his crypt, sitting against the wall of the upper level and working on drinking his second bottle of Jack. She had gone straight there without dawdling. He had just been that determined to get as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible, and had used his vampiric speed to help achieve that goal. Without saying a word, Tara took the bottle away and sat beside him.

"Gonna need that back, pet," he said quietly.

"Not just yet." Her voice was calm and confident. Two things that wouldn't have been true before the dream world.

He sighed and hugged his knees to his chest. "You should be off having a snog and a snuggle with your honey, not playing babysitter to Sunnyhell's most pathetic excuse for a vampire."

Tara hated seeing him like this. He looked… broken. And his aura….. It _hurt_ to look at his aura. He was trembling slightly as he fought to sort out all of the feelings that had so suddenly become unfuzzed. She still remembered the long litany of things he'd listed during their first real conversation in the dream. All of that to process all at once. It was no wonder he was trying to seek at least temporary oblivion in the bottom of a bottle.

"I miss her." He laughed suddenly, a dark, bitter sound. "Hell, I miss _me_. All that's happened since I first came to this bloody hellhole…. I don't even know who I am anymore. In the dream… that was close. It was different, but you can't just stay the same, yeah? I adapt. It's what I do. It's part of who I am. But now, here… now I'm just _this_. Miserable and alone. That's not…. I _can't_ …. I don't wanna be _this_!"

It was a little incoherent – mostly from the emotions themselves being hard to put into words – but Tara understood.

"I know who you are," she said softly. He looked up at her, startled, when she murmured the words to her binding spell, locking his wrists together with the version he couldn't get out of on his own. "No matter what, you're my Spooky."

He stared her for a silent moment as she held out her arms. Then he let himself lean into her embrace. She held him and murmured soft bits of nonsense as he cried over Buffy and over all of the mangled pieces of himself he was still trying so desperately to fit back together.

 _I don't know who you're becoming,_ she thought as she gently stroked his hair, _but Dawn and me, we'll help you get there. And no matter what, you'll always belong to us._

 **…**

* * *

 **...**

While Dawn ranted and raved at a confused and increasingly upset Willow, and Tara comforted her vampire, Giles threw down in his glasses in disgust and got up from the tome of prophecies he'd been reading.

 _Why couldn't I have found that bloody thing_ before _? When it might have done some good._

He hadn't read enough to see if it might have held a way to keep his slayer from dying. He couldn't deal with it. Not now. _I need a drink._ He'd stayed away from the scotch since the unfortunate incident where he'd snogged an equally – if not more so – drunken Spike in front of Dawn, but he couldn't remain sober. He'd just stay in, safely away from any vampires who alternated between being weepy and overly affectionate when utterly rat-arsed.

Underneath the watcher's temporarily discarded glasses, the misunderstood section of prophecy waited.

 _From the flesh of the Knight,_

 _The Key shall be reforged._

If Giles had read further, he would have realized that the passage didn't refer to Dawn being made from Buffy.

 _Aspects three: love, light, and dark_

 _To which the first and last be assigned_

 _The journey will tell the tale._

 _The Warrior of Light will be restored from_

 _Her just rewards and be asked to choose._

 _Follow love or turn down the path of dark._

 _She must choose the Knight or the Champion._

 **…**

-Fin

 **End Note:** This is the end of this particular story, but I'm already working on the sequel - Dawn's Fairytale - which will show more of their interactions and the reactions of the Scoobies.


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